


Domestic Creatures

by veeagainst



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, First War with Voldemort, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-29 12:21:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 53,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veeagainst/pseuds/veeagainst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Growing up is hard to do -- but the journey is better if you take someone with you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This chaptered fic is finished, but I'm going to post a new chapter every few days just because of how long it is and how much time it takes me to format each chapter. This is the fic I most recently wrote about a pairing I've been in love with for over 10 years now -- it's rambling and it's big and it's not even my headcanon but I think it sums up the pairing quite nicely. Please comment if you enjoy!

Sirius Black stared into the cupboard in front of him and thought, ‘Animal, vegetable, mineral, or elixir?’ He just could not guess what the lumpy brown-green thing in the back, now crawling with white maggots, could have been. He had pulled out all the other things in the cupboard and discovered this pungent surprise. He thought that it might have once been a banana, but then again based upon what it looked like now it once could have been a baby lemur and he wouldn’t have known the difference. He shut the cupboard door, walked away, thought, _Goddammit, Sirius, you’re an adult now_ , walked back, opened it up, and started to put his hand into the cupboard to pull out the disgusting mess.

 

 _Wait a minute_ , his brain objected. _Aren’t you a wizard or something?_

 

With his hand hovering in front of the… thing, he had a little argument with himself. And since he was alone, alone in the flat that was his alone, and not a soul could hear him, he had it aloud.

 

‘I can’t just transfigure it. The matter isn’t nice enough to transfigure into anything that isn’t disgusting. And I’m not sure what other spells would work on it. Obliviating it would just mean brown gunk all over the kitchen; using incendio would produce terrible smells and probably burn down the whole block.’ He put his hand on the front part of the shelf and saw the maggots heave. ‘I really don’t want to do this,’ he said, and if he caught himself wishing for a response, he quashed those feelings down hard. This was adulthood. It was 1979 and Sirius Black had been an adult living a basically autonomous adult life for nearly two years now. The problem was, it never seemed to get any easier. He stepped back from the shelf and looked into it with growing disgust. ‘This is your fault,’ he informed himself. He tried to sound stern, but it wasn’t convincing. Maybe he should go down to the shop, buy a newspaper, roll it up, and smack himself with it. ‘Bad dog,’ he added, for good measure. Still, he didn’t want to get any closer to it. He sighed, stepped back, and saw the time in the clock above the sink. He was going to be late for training if he didn’t hurry up. He grabbed his robes off their hook, his keys off the hook beside them, and ran out the door.

 

Sirius used the public Floo station down the street from his house. His flat wasn’t on the Floo Network, but the public station was nearby and he didn’t mind a walk in the morning. It was located in an access closet in the stairwell of the Chalk Farm underground station. Sirius glanced around the station, ducked into the closet, and queued with the usual three other Ministry employees who used the station to commute. They nodded at each other; two of them were reading the Daily Prophet. Sirius glanced at the headlines; doom and gloom as it had been for as long as he could remember: ‘Attacks on Apparators in Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall: new Death Eater tactics spell terror’ and ‘Should Thatcher be warned?’ were the two that caught his eye. Then it was his turn; he took his bag of Floo powder out of his robe, stepped into the fire, and a few seconds later stepped out of the grate and into the Ministry.

 

He queued again to go through the security checks, then for one of the lifts. He nodded to the usual familiar faces and headed into the big Auror office. He was in his third year as an Auror-in-training, and he had recently been given a nicer desk, further from the flow of traffic and with a view of the door.

 

Auror training was a lot like being an adult: it was difficult both in ways that Sirius could have predicted, and in ways that he could never have even imagined before they arose, ugly and hydra-headed, to make his life hell. Much like he’d known about such things as having to pay bills and learn DIY spells and keep a reasonably clean bathtub, he’d known that Auror training would require him to work long hours. He’d known it would be taxing mentally and physically, that he’d come home bruised and go to the Ministry bruised and spend all day in between those two points bruised too. He’d known that he’d have to learn a lot more, and he’d even had an idea that he’d have to learn to give in – just a little bit, not full-on submission, but a few compromises here and there – to an authority greater than himself. He had not, however, imagined the great aching void of loneliness that would come with being an adult, nor had he had any idea of the moral crises that would confront him during Auror training.

 

Two years into Auror training, they had moved on to the fieldwork stage and Sirius found that it was a lot harder than attending the endless lectures and hours of theory discussion that had marked his early days of training. He was now one of three to have graduated on to field work – two others having dropped out before making it to the end of their second year – and seemed, in some regards, to be on an accelerated track to becoming a full Auror. Mad-Eye Moody, the head of the Auror training programme, had taken note of him, and had shaken his hand when he’d received top honours for his theory exams. But once they moved into the field, and the clear-cut lines of what to do when became blurrier with real-life situations, he’d started to slip. The Aurors he shadowed described him as competent, but never inspired, unlike the rising star of his cohort, a former Ravenclaw who, despite two years of working closely with her, he felt he barely knew. He was okay in the field, but she was great. Lately he’d been trying to watch her to see what the difference was – he didn’t think she had anything on him in spell work, certainly not in transfiguration, and although she was obviously clever with problem solving, he was too.

 

What he’d seen would have troubled him if he’d had the time or energy to sit back and reflect upon it. Instead, caught up in the headlong rush of trying to actually be good at this Auror business, he found himself desperately jealous of her. The difference was that she didn’t hesitate. Someone would say, ‘Imagine there’s a farmhouse full of Death Eaters,’ and she would run in the door, wand out, spells blazing. Sirius would lay out a cautious plan that involved securing the house, checking for civilians, and then moving inside. He was worried about hurting someone who didn’t deserve to be hurt. Then she would point out that the Death Eaters would already know he was there by the time he’d done all this checking around, and they would have fled already – they could Apparate, after all, something that was seriously troubling the Aurors.

 

The Death Eaters had developed some sort of spell for dragging Apparating Aurors – or anyone else who might be fleeing from them – out of the air. Sirius, the former Ravenclaw, and the third member of their cohort – a drab-looking man in his thirties who had some truly impressive duelling skills – had been trying to solve the problem and had come up with a few work-arounds – advanced shield charms, wearing shielding amulets, or just shifting the angle of Apparition (making the end result less sure, but they were all master Apparators so no one had wound up splinched yet ). However, these were partial solutions and highly risky ones at that – they couldn’t be used by the average wizard. The Death Eaters still had the advantage, and until they could untangle the actual workings of whatever spell they were using, Apparition remained their domain.

 

So today, looking through his post, as Sirius thought about practising Apparating – he had gotten to a point where he could shift his angle at the final moment and land somewhere entirely different from his original projection – he thought about the irony that he was the cautious one in the field. He tried to imagine other people calling him cautious, but it didn’t sound right. The problem, he knew, was that he was too concerned about what one of his tutors called the ‘peripherals of the situation’ – in other words, anything or anyone that might fall between him and a Death Eater. Sirius knew that some of the Death Eaters who they brought in would be sent immediately to Azkaban without a trial. They  were in a state of war, as the Minister for Magic had been emphasising throughout his party’s gruelling re-election campaign over the past few weeks, and sometimes you had to ‘fight fire with fire and curse with curse’. There were moves afoot to allow Aurors to use the Unforgivables in certain circumstances, and this worried Sirius deeply. They had already learnt the theory behind them, but, unlike the other two trainees, he was reluctant to cast them upon the animal subjects who they kept for spell experimentation. When he looked into their cages, the unreported Animagus inside of him made him want to recoil. Thus he had managed to avoid having to actually cast one of the Unforgivables, and this combined with his hesitancy and moral quibbles meant that he had become a decidedly mediocre trainee Auror.

 

‘Black.’

 

Sirius looked up from his post. Natasha, his chief tutor in fieldwork, was standing before him, her travelling cloak arranged about her shoulders. ‘We have somewhere to go,’ she informed him. 


	2. Chapter 2

They Apparated to a marshy field in the Fens. A cold wind blew off the sea, which was out of sight despite the immensely flat landscape but not far off based on the salt smell. Natasha led them through the long grass, their shoes squelching softly in the muddy ground. Sirius hunched into his robes against the wind and cast a silent warming spell for his hands. After walking nearly a mile, they came to a small farm centred on a thatched roof barn and a cottage. There was a tumbledown quality to the buildings; the thatch was unkempt and patches of plaster had come off the walls. There were no car or carriage tracks in the muddy forecourt, and a recent rainstorm had washed away any traces of animal or human footprints. However, the smell of burnt wood tinged the air as if a campfire had been recently extinguished.

 

They stopped beneath a tree and crouched in the dirt. ‘If they’ve put up any wards, I haven’t felt them,’ Sirius said. This wasn’t a particularly useful statement; good magical wards were impossible to detect even if you stepped right through them. Natasha ignored him and gazed intently at the barn. Sirius turned on his heels to follow her gaze, but he couldn’t see anything. He was rapidly developing a sense of foreboding. This often happened to him before they encountered something in the field, and it manifested itself as a thick soupy feeling in his stomach, like he’d eaten too much of something hot and dense.

 

‘I think that this is a job for you,’ Natasha said, still not looking at him. ‘Not any of the others.’

 

‘Why?’ Sirius asked. He was startled; he had gotten the impression that Natasha thought there would never be a job for him due to his general incompetence. Maybe she had noticed his cautiousness and taken it for a strength. A fragile blossom of hope sprouted in his mind: maybe he wasn’t as bad at this as he feared.

 

She ignored the question. ‘Here’s what I know: there’s suspected Dark creature activity around here. This farm is at the epicentre, but only for right now. Whatever is in there doesn’t stay in one place for long, but it’s gotten stuck here for the past few days. It could move on again whenever.’

 

Sirius nodded and took a deep breath. ‘What’s our plan?’

 

Natasha looked at him now, and in her facial expression he could see that this was a test, and that she expected him to fail. ‘You go in there,’ she said, ‘and you deal with the problem in the way that an Auror would.’ She looked away again. ‘This will not be difficult to do for an Auror.’

 

‘Right,’ Sirius said. He’d heard her like she’d spoken aloud: it would be difficult for him. He straightened his robes and wished fleetingly that she could see the marks he’d gotten on his N.E.W.T.s. The transfiguration examiner had told him that he’d never examined a student so gifted. He wondered why she’d chosen this morning to test him. Maybe she’d been looking in his kitchen window this morning and had seen the dismal state of his flat. Or maybe she’d seen him down at the pub last night, nursing a pint and watching Muggle football alone while his friends were off being highly successful god knew where. ‘Ok,’ he added, unnecessarily. ‘Are you covering me?’

 

‘That’s why I’m here,’ she said.

 

Sirius left her underneath the tree and walked up the muddy lane. There was no sign of aggression from the barn, but he thought he could sense anticipation. His hand was on his wand in his robe pocket, but it didn’t feel comforting. He stepped up to the big double barn doors and thought he heard something scurrying inside. He walked around the building and found a small side door. Without drawing his wand, he called out, ‘Hello?’

 

There was definitely something moving within. He fancied that he’d heard whispering too. He pushed open the door with his free hand. It was dark in there. ‘Hello?’ he called again. ‘I’m from the Ministry of Magic.’ He heard a snuffling sound, and then a baby started crying.

 

‘Hello,’ said a woman’s hoarse voice. A lantern flared and illuminated the interior of the barn with quavering fingers of light. Sirius stepped inside and saw the woman. She was sitting on the floor, holding a toddler. A filthy child of indiscriminate age – Sirius guessed seven or eight – sat beside her on an overturned bucket. An older man was lying on a cot; beside him in a basket was the baby. The filthy child reached out a hand and put a finger into the baby’s mouth. The interior of the barn smelled cloying and close, like someone was ill. Looking at the old man, Sirius guessed it was him, but the woman and the children didn’t look good either: they were thin and dirty and something else, something he couldn’t place, but it wasn’t good. Far away from the cot, in a corner of the barn, he saw a series of small, empty metal cages with their doors opened.

 

‘We haven’t done anything wrong,’ the woman said. Her voice was fierce but Sirius could see that she was terrified.

 

‘That’s fine, I believe you,’ he said, and he suddenly felt as if a cold hand had wrapped itself around his heart. There were five cages. They had obviously been cobbled together here, welded from scrap metal. He hated himself as he said, ‘Are you registered?’

 

There was a long silence. When their eyes met, he saw that hers were full of tears. ‘I am,’ she said. ‘So is my husband.’

 

‘But not your children,’ Sirius said quietly. She put up a hand and swiped furiously at her eyes. Sirius realised that she was terrified not just of having been found, but of him: of the power of the government that he represented. He felt like all the air was being crushed out of his body. ‘Well, I can help you with that,’ he said. ‘I’m not here to do you harm.’

 

She jerked her head up and gave him a fierce glare. ‘Don’t lie to me,’ she said.

 

‘I’m not,’ Sirius said. He stepped towards the cot. ‘Is he ill?’ he asked. He thought, _the full moon was four days ago, he should have recovered by now unless he’s had some serious injury._

 

She shook her head. ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she said bitterly. ‘The change takes him badly nowadays. When he was younger it was easier on him, but as he’s gotten older…’

 

Sirius crouched down beside his cot. He could see the man’s chest rising and falling, ever so slowly. He felt light headed with worry. He wanted to Apparate far away and see Remus right now. It had been months since they’d been able to be together for the full moon. ‘We can get him to St Mungo’s—‘

 

‘No,’ she hissed. ‘He’ll stay right here.’ She seemed to realise the absurdity of the statement; Sirius could have overpowered her easily, called in the rest of the Ministry, Aurors and all. He realised that Natasha was still out there waiting for him and he started to feel the first tendrils of panic. Natasha knew these people were here.

 

‘Listen,’ Sirius said. A strange calm settled on him, like he had become the eye of a storm. ‘Listen, you need to get out of here.’

 

That threw her. ‘What?’

 

‘You need to leave,’ he said. ‘The Ministry knows you’re here, and they want to take you into their custody. I don’t know the charges against you, but I have a feeling that they aren’t your fault.’

 

‘We’re sick,’ the woman said. ‘We have a disease. We didn’t choose to be this way.’

 

‘I understand completely,’ Sirius said. ‘You’ll have to trust me that I do. Someone close to me has the same disease.’

 

The woman took a deep breath and seemed to throw out all caution. ‘They’re not our children,’ she said. ‘We’re in trouble because we took them.’

 

‘What?’ Sirius asked, startled.

 

‘They’re all infected,’ she said. ‘Just like us. But their parents didn’t want them, and they left them at an orphanage so we rescued them.’

 

Sirius wondered if the story was true, or if something more sinister was happening here. Whatever it was, the woman was desperately scared, the man was very ill, and the children, including the baby, were all silently watching him. The Ministry would separate them. The children would go back to the orphanage and the woman and her husband would almost certainly go to Azkaban. Sirius looked at the oldest child and asked, ‘Are you ok? Do you want to come with me?’

 

She shook her head and reached out for the woman’s hand. Sirius looked at them all and felt helpless. How could he rescue them? He stood up and said, ‘You have to leave. All of you. Can you Apparate?’ The woman looked terrified but determined. She nodded. ‘Ok,’ he said, ‘take them away from here. I’ll stay with the children while you take him.’ Wordlessly, she handed him the toddler and went to the man; with a soft _pop_ , they disappeared. Sirius held the child while the girl looked up at him with her huge eyes. Sirius smiled at her and said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come with me? I will make sure you’re ok.’ In his mind he added, _If it means taking you away and looking after you all myself, I will_.

 

‘No, sir,’ she said, her little voice fierce. ‘You see, I got bitten when I was three and my parents left me behind at St Mungo’s. I don’t really remember them. But Miss Sarah came and took me away and now when I’m sick I get to stay with her and all of them. This is my family now.’

 

 

Mad Eye seemed more disappointed than angry.

 

‘You understand that lycanthropy is a serious threat to the wizarding community?’

 

Sirius kept his eyes straight ahead and his jaw clenched. Moody certainly did have an interesting array of photographs on the wall of his office.

 

‘He Who Must Not Be Named is turning werewolves to his side every single day.’

 

Sirius couldn’t help himself. ‘Probably because the Ministry gives them no incentive to not join him.’

 

Moody slammed his hand onto his desk. ‘So they should be given a free pass to ally with evil?’

 

‘No,’ Sirius snapped, ‘but for many of them it’s better than being treated as no better than toads by the Ministry. Registration for Muggle-born werewolves? ID cards? Mandatory “health” check-ups that are just thinly veiled attempts at surveillance?’

 

‘Your political viewpoint is fine when you’re not on the job,’ Moody snarled. ‘But when you are a trainee Auror, you will uphold the laws of the wizarding community, not to mention the laws of the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister herself has issued a directive to the Ministry to control the spread of He Who Must Not Be Named’s forces. Part of that includes registering and controlling the population of Dark Creatures, including werewolves.’

 

Sirius opened his mouth to protest, but Moody held up his hand. ‘Shut up,’ he growled, ‘and listen to me. You told me that they escaped – Apparated away before your eyes while you were trying to talk them through registration – but Natasha tells me that they were powerless and there’s no way they could have done that in the time they had. If this wasn’t a case of he-said, she-said, then you would be appearing before the Wizengamot for aiding and abetting a crime. And I believe that you should be, but there’s no way to prove it. Do you understand me?’

 

Sirius nodded. His jaw was clenched so tightly he thought he might crack some molars.

 

Moody sighed and leaned back in his chair. ‘When you applied to become a trainee Auror, there was only one Auror who didn’t approve your application – that’s how strong it was. Normally at least two or three of us will say no even to great candidates. You had almost perfect N.E.W.T.s. The letter from your Head of House was so glowing we didn’t need candles to read it. You passed the entrance exam with one of the highest scores in years. You demonstrated an aptitude, particularly in transfiguration, that seemed a decade beyond your years. In your interviews, you showed yourself to be creative, a fast thinker, and to have the personal skills to be a leader. Your first two years of training made many people believe that I was wrong. You see, I was the one who didn’t approve your application at the beginning and I’ll tell you why: it was obvious to me that you would never obey any authority you didn’t respect – and the only authority you respect is your own.’


	3. Chapter 3

When he came back to the flat, he was unemployed, disgraced, and shaking with anger. He nearly ripped the front door off its hinges opening it; he stormed up the stairs and into the flat with his fists clenched; he rounded on the offending shelf in the tiny kitchen, grabbed the entire thing, lifted it out of the cupboard, and threw it out the window into the skip he knew was below. It was a fluid movement and it should have worked, would have worked – well, he revised that down to could have worked – if the slimy mess hadn’t been quite so slimy and hadn’t slid down and landed, maggots and mould and possible sentient antennae and all, on his floor. The shelf sailed out the window and he heard it smack off the side of the skip a floor below and then impact somewhere on the ground, in his landlord’s back garden, and break apart. He waited a few moments for the sound to stop echoing, and then he sat down on the floor next to the thing, put his head on his knees, and, just because he was all alone and no one could hear him, he let himself cry.

 

 

The next morning Sirius found a wizarding bookshop and presented himself to the young woman at the counter.

 

‘Hello,’ he said. She looked up at him and raised her eyebrows. ‘Listen, do you have any books about household charms?’

 

She laughed. ‘Getting tired of the bachelor lifestyle?’ she asked. ‘Or are you trying to impress a girl?’

 

Sirius smiled back. ‘I found something pretty disgusting growing in one of my kitchen cupboards, so I thought it might be time to learn.’

 

She led him to a shelf that had been colonised by hundreds of cheerily-coloured and titled books. ‘This one is the traditional one,’ she said, sliding down _Mrs Puddlesworth’s Guide to Maintaining a Wonderful Wizarding Household_ , ‘or there’s the newer sorts.’ She grabbed _Charm the Filth Away!_ and handed it to him. ‘There’s been some innovations in household charms as a result of the feminist movement.’

 

Sirius grinned. The cover of the first book depicted an incredibly traditional looking witch in a gingham robe surrounded by ten smiling children. The wizard who was presumably her husband had his feet up and a cup of tea in hand by the fire. The second book, meanwhile, showed a young wizarding couple with a record player and a stack of 45s, wearing vaguely fashionable clothing, waving their wands together. ‘I’ll go with progress,’ Sirius said, taking the second book from her.

 

‘Great,’ she said, turning a big smile on him. ‘And you’re sure you’re not doing this to impress a girl?’

 

Having made that purchase and gotten her contact details, he went to the post office and sent Remus an owl, asking if he wanted to meet up for a drink. After yesterday’s experience he had a desperate desire to see his friend and make sure that he was doing well. From there he enacted step two of his plan to get his adult life on track and went into a Muggle bookshop to purchase a cookbook. The woman behind the counter there gave him two books on cooking for beginners as well as her phone number, giggling as he fumbled with his Muggle coins. From there he went to a Muggle grocery store and bought all of the ingredients required to cook the first three dinner recipes from one of the cookbooks. With utter determination, he navigated down the crowded lunchtime sidewalks and back to his flat. He walked up the stairs and unlocked the door. A dire smell assaulted his sensitive nose and he took several deep breaths of the mildewy hallway air before stepping inside.

 

‘Ok,’ he said to the cramped front room. Thinking of his three best friends, all of whom were busy somewhere far away from him struggling to become their own people, he invoked the old joke: ‘It’s time to get serious.’

 

 

Remus replied to say that he couldn’t make it into London for three weeks.

 

From Hogwarts, Remus had gone on to further education, something that he joked was perfect for him because he could set his own hours. He was earning some kind of degree from Oxford – Sirius could never remember the details, but he knew that Remus had gotten a very selective place and that only one other girl from their year at Hogwarts had gone on to a similar programme. Sirius did know, however, that the end result was that he did not see Remus very often. Peter, meanwhile, was working for his family’s business up in Leeds and, although James lived in London, since he and Lily had gotten married the instances where he and Sirius saw each other had also dropped off dramatically. James had lived with Sirius in glorious bachelor fashion before he moved in with Lily at the end of last year, but after he had moved out Sirius had gotten the impression that he and Lily felt a bit sorry for him having to live alone and so he didn’t like to show up at their flat unannounced too often. Thus, with three weeks of completely nothing to do until Remus came, Sirius set about cooking every recipe in the cookbook. He cleaned the flat once a day until he got the charms right. He learned how to make chicken cordon bleu, and steak tartare, and shepherd’s pie, and any other number of dishes. He bought mountains of ingredients and churned out mountains of cooked food, and what he didn’t eat he put into the freezer. When his tiny freezer ran out of room, he went out to the shops and bought a new freezer. By the time Remus’s visit rolled around, Sirius had done so much cooking that he felt certain he could be employed by any fine dining establishment in the greater London area. The flat was spotless, and had been graced by some new items of furniture that he had lovingly purchased in his three weeks of unemployment. His motorcycle was shined to a high gleam and he was doing 100 sit-ups and push-ups every day.

 

His rent was due the next day, but since it was a Saturday and the banks wouldn’t be open, he decided that he had to go to Gringotts to change his galleons into Muggle money that afternoon. He walked down to Charing Cross, taking in the sights and sounds of central London, revelling in the atmosphere of the city. It was a rare sunny day and people were out in force. There were girls in tiny skirts everywhere, mixed among businessmen and tourists in baseball caps. Sirius felt immensely proud of himself for having remembered that the bank would be closed; he was really making progress at this adulthood business. He stepped into Diagon Alley and wandered past shop after shop, thinking about what he might buy when he came out of the bank. Maybe his flat needed a self-cleaning fountain with a large stone elf inside of it who looked like he was showering? It would certainly create a soothing water sound to fall asleep to. There was also the wide range of cooking items – he’d been buying a lot of those over the past few weeks, but none of the magical variety, and he thought that buying an enchanted potato-peeler might solve the problem his own sub-standard potato-peeling charm had been causing, i.e., that his potatoes tended to grow an excessively thick, thorny skin when he charmed them.

 

In Gringotts, the goblin behind the counter handed him the usual cheque drawn on Muggle money that he used to pay for his rent, and the usual fifty pounds of Muggle money that he withdrew every month for Muggle expenses. Living in London, it was often easier for him to just go to a Muggle shop when he wanted something like food rather than make his way to a wizarding shop.

 

‘Oh, listen, I actually need some more than that,’ Sirius said, thinking of the nice pot he’d been coveting in a cookery shop by his house. ‘Why don’t we say a hundred?’

 

The goblin raised its red eyes to him and frowned. ‘You don’t have a hundred,’ she said.

 

‘Sorry?’ Sirius asked, thinking that he must have misheard. ‘I mean a hundred Muggle pounds.’

 

‘I know,’ the goblin said testily. ‘Minus what I’ve just given you, and what you need to pay your rent, you have the equivalent of four Muggle pounds and twenty-three pence.’

 

Sirius stared at her. ‘There must be some problem,’ he said.

 

‘Your savings account is empty aside from the money for a year’s rent and you haven’t received a paycheque since 3 June,’ she informed him. ‘After today’s withdrawal, you have remaining in your account twelve sickles and four knuts.’

 

 

The walk back to Camden was terrible. The sun was too hot, and everywhere Sirius looked, people were spending money. Girls were wearing tiny skirts that inevitably had been expensive, and every businessman’s suit must have cost hundreds of pounds. Sirius watched a family of pudgy tourists hand over several notes to a dodgy looking man pushing a cart and receive in exchange hideous hats in the shape of Big Ben. He clamped down the urge to yell at them about spending their money more wisely.

 

The goblin banker had explained to him in no uncertain terms that his inheritance from his uncle was only large enough to be used for his rent – which was insured by Gringotts, and so, while she had not been explicit about what the consequences would be for not paying it, he could tell that they would be unpleasant – and that, without his salary from being an Auror trainee coming into his account, he was dead broke. He hadn’t mentioned that he’d lost his job, and had promised to go speak to the finance office in the Ministry about it, but he hadn’t sounded convincing and he was certain the goblin had known he was lying and had been too polite to mention it. _And when a goblin is being polite to you,_ he thought, _you must really be in the shit._

He walked up the main road through Camden, past the clouds of cigarette smoke wafting out of the pubs and clubs, and up the bridge over the canal. He didn’t know what had happened. How could the money have just run out? Since he’d come of age, he’d always had that inheritance, and that salary. He’d just gone to the bank and they’d done everything for him. He’d never inquired about how much there might be or what rate he might be using it at. It had just _been_. He felt like whining, but there was no one there to listen. He was a Black, even if he was a disgraced, disowned, disinherited one. The money wasn’t supposed to run out.

 

‘Sirius! There you are!’

 

Sirius stopped in his headlong walk towards home and focused his eyes. Remus was standing in front of the dark red tile exterior of the Chalk Farm underground station, waving and grinning. Sirius checked his watch and realised that he was a half hour late to meet him. As Remus made his way towards him through the crowds of commuters moving around the station, Sirius thought that Remus looked both happy and healthy. It was a relief; in the back of his mind, ever since the day he’d been fired from Auror training, he’d been gnawing down on the worry that Remus would end up like the people he’d rescued in the barn.

 

‘Shit, Moony, I’m sorry I’m late,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘I got held up at the bank.’

 

Remus shook it enthusiastically. ‘No worries at all, I’ve just been reading. I’m sorry it’s taken me three weeks to get out to see you! I’ve got some exciting news!’

 

‘Oh yeah?’ Sirius asked. ‘I’ve got some news myself, though I don’t know if it counts as exciting.’

 

‘Great! I can’t wait to hear it! Pub?’ Remus asked.

 

Sirius winced inwardly, thoughts of his bank account looming, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to tell Remus about that just yet. ‘Sounds great,’ he said.

 

Once they were safely ensconced in a smoky, beer-scented dark corner of Sirius’s local, pints in front of them, Remus said, ‘Are James and Peter going to join us?’

 

Sirius realised that he had completely forgotten to invite the other two. Apparently lots of things had been slipping his mind recently. ‘I think they’re probably busy,’ he said. ‘Wanted to see you, actually. Hadn’t seen you in a while, thought it might be nice to catch up.’ He wondered why he was suddenly clipping off his sentence subjects – was he some Victorian colonel in the Punjab writing a dispatch to the missus back in Devonshire? He felt strangely nervous. He had imagined this conversation going the way of griping about werewolves’ rights and Ministry mistreatment but now that Remus was in front of him he was suddenly consumed with a desire to never explain what he had found in that barn in the Fens.

 

Remus was busy looking touched. ‘It’s really good to see you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been missing everyone up in Oxford.’

 

Sirius felt a flash of guilt. Early on in Remus’s tenure there, the Marauders -- as he still fondly thought of them – had had a surprise visit to Oxford. They’d punted down the Isis and drank on the quad of St Cyprian’s, the vast golden-stoned wizarding college, and they’d half-heartedly chased serious-looking girls wearing thick glasses mainly with the intention of impressing each other. It had been utterly brilliant. _Why hadn’t they done that again?,_ Sirius wondered. Well, there was still time. He’d get them all together and they’d do it. Things could be brilliant again.

 

‘So what’s your news?’ Remus asked. He reached across and cranked open one of the pub windows. Sirius could see some of the older patrons giving them the evil eye, but the summery London air that wafted in, even with its undertones of petrol and stagnant canal, was worth it.

 

Sirius took a long drink and said, ‘It’s not very good, actually.’ Remus frowned and Sirius said, ‘I got fired from Auror training.’

 

‘Oh fuck,’ Remus said, a hand flying up to cover his mouth. ‘I’m sorry.’

 

Sirius squinted. ‘I’m not sure I am,’ he confessed. ‘I don’t think I was cut out to be an Auror.’

 

‘Why not?’ Remus leaned forward, face intent. Sirius remembered that look. He’d always liked it. It made him feel like he was the absolute centre of Remus’s attention.

 

‘Well, the reason why I got fired was because they said I wasn’t good at obeying authority.’

 

‘Oh Sirius.’

 

‘Yeah, yeah, I know, but listen.’ Sirius lowered his voice and leaned forward, not that he thought anyone in the room could possibly have heard him. ‘They want to give Aurors the ability to use Unforgiveables.’

 

Remus raised his eyebrows and whistled. ‘That doesn’t seem right.’

 

Sirius shook his head, and decided to lie a little bit, rather than get into the whole story. ‘So I’ve not been wanting to do that, and we had a conversation about how I needed to choose between my politics and my job.’

 

‘And of course you chose your politics,’ Remus said.

 

‘What was I supposed to have done?’

 

‘No, no,’ Remus said, ‘I agree with you. It’s shit that you had to make that choice.’

 

‘So that’s my story,’ Sirius said with a shrug. ‘What’s yours?’

 

‘Well,’ Remus said, suddenly embarrassed, ‘it’s a bit different. I’m moving to London!’

 

‘What?’ Sirius asked, startled. ‘What happened to Oxford?’

 

‘I finished my degree,’ Remus said patiently. ‘I just sat my exams. That’s why I couldn’t come up to see you. I’ll find out if I passed in a few weeks. Anyway, I should do.’

 

‘Congratulations!’ Sirius said. ‘So are you looking for a job?’

 

‘I actually am already provisionally accepted to do a doctorate,’ Remus said. He was looking down at the table and Sirius thought he could see him blushing. ‘I have to pass my exams, but, yeah.’

 

‘So you could become a professor?’ Sirius asked. ‘That would be amazing.’

 

‘Someday,’ Remus said. ‘It’s a long way off.’

 

Sirius waved this away; he knew Moony could do it. ‘Wait, but why does that mean you’re moving to London? Shouldn’t you be staying in Oxford?’

 

‘The doctoral programme I’ve been accepted to is at UCL, actually,’ Remus said. ‘In their School of Defensive Dark Arts. They’re some of the only people in the world doing the kind of research that I’m interested in. My supervisor at Oxford recommended that I go to UCL to work on this project with a famous professor there.’

 

‘Wow,’ was all Sirius could say. ‘I’m really happy for you,’ he said, and he was. He bought them some more drinks. Remus bought them the round after, and then they started getting properly drunk and losing track of who was doing what with regards to paying. At some point, with the table littered with sticky, empty pint glasses, Sirius came up with a brilliant idea.

 

‘Hey Moony, you should live with me.’

 

Remus looked up from his drink, his hair swinging low across his eyes. ‘Yeah? Do you have a spare room?’

 

‘I do,’ Sirius said.

 

‘Wait,’ Remus said. ‘Is it the one James used to have? Because it’s going to smell like James.’

 

‘I’ve cleaned it since,’ Sirius said defensively.

 

‘Really?’ Remus asked. ‘I figured you’d leave it as a shrine to James’s bachelorhood.’

 

Sirius snorted. ‘That doesn’t deserve a shrine. He was a miserable bachelor. He spent the entire time pining for Lily.’

 

‘Good point.’ Remus finished his latest drink and said, ‘Well, I suppose it can’t hurt to go see it – and smell it. Shall we?’

 

Sirius realised that he was very, very drunk as they walked down the side street that led to his flat. ‘Moony, the sidewalk seems steeper than I remembered.’

 

Beside him, Remus was laughing. ‘I was planning on going back to Oxford tonight, but I think I’m too drunk to Floo.’

 

Sirius started giggling too. ‘Too drunk to Floo,’ he repeated, and then they both dissolved in helpless laughter. Sirius sagged against his front door as Remus leaned against the wall, his head thrown back and the long line of his neck stretched out while he laughed. Sirius was filled with a brief desire to run his hand down Remus’s neck and feel what the skin there was like. Then Remus rolled his head around to look at Sirius and said, ‘Are you too drunk to use the key?’

 

‘Most certainly,’ said Sirius, but then it twisted and the door opened inward and they both staggered inside and up the stairs. One of his neighbours gave them a scandalised look and Sirius said, ‘It’s ok, she’s only dressed like a man,’ which set off Remus again and made the neighbour glare before scurrying downstairs and slamming the front door.

 

‘Not getting us off to a good start as flatmates, are you?’ Remus asked through his laughter. Sirius opened the door and they stepped inside. Remus sniffed the air and went to the kitchen. Sirius weaved after him and found him opening the cupboards.

 

‘Gosh, there’s a lot of food in here!’ Remus said. ‘And you got rid of the thing.’

 

‘Wait, what?’ Sirius asked. ‘You mean the thing that used to be rotting in my cupboard?’

 

Remus nodded.

 

‘You knew about that?’ Sirius demanded.

 

‘Werewolf, remember? I could smell it the last time I was here, so I went looking.’

 

‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

 

‘Because the last time I was here, it was literally the only thing in your cupboard, so I figured that you already knew.’

 

‘Goddammit, Moony,’ Sirius said, with absolutely no conviction. ‘Here, have a look at the spare room.’

 

Remus was looking around. ‘Is there a lot more furniture in here than there used to be?’

 

‘I just bought some new things,’ Sirius mumbled. He was suddenly acutely embarrassed.

 

Remus flicked on the lights and said, ‘Holy shit, it is clean in here.’

 

‘I’ve been unemployed,’ Sirius snapped. ‘What’s wrong with being clean?’

 

‘Nothing,’ Remus said. He smiled. ‘It looks great.’

 

‘So you’ll move in?’ Sirius asked. Through his drunken haze, he suddenly realised that his heart was pounding in his chest.

 

Remus looked around the flat. ‘This is a pretty nice place,’ he said. ‘My PhD stipend isn’t exactly huge. What’s the rent?’

 

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Sirius said. ‘Whatever you want to pay.’ The thought of money sobered him up a bit. ‘James lived here for free.’

 

Remus frowned at Sirius. ‘I’ll pay,’ he said. ‘You could have charged James a lot, you know. Prongs is loaded.’

 

Sirius named a figure off the top of his head. Remus stared at him like he’d lost his mind, and asked what half his rent was. Sirius said, ‘I have no idea.’ Remus blinked once, a show of exaggerated patience, and Sirius broke down and said, ‘I’m actually kind of broke.’ And then it all tumbled out: the bank, what the goblin had said, how he needed a job.

 

‘Hm,’ Remus said when he was done. Sirius sat down on the couch and put his head in his hands. A second later he felt the couch dip as Remus’s weight settled down next to him, then Remus’s warm hand was on his shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze. ‘Don’t worry,’ Remus said. ‘We’ll sort this out.’

 

Sirius raised his head and gave Remus a weak smile. ‘It’s my problem,’ he said.

 

Remus smiled back. ‘It’s ok, flatmate. Doesn’t mean I can’t help.’


	4. Chapter 4

They had a raucous moving in party two weeks later. Peter, his girlfriend Emmy, James, and Lily combined forces with Sirius and Remus to move Remus’s things into Sirius’s flat. Halfway through the process they had already finished five bottles of wine and it was only two in the afternoon. It was getting increasingly difficult to Floo back and forth with heavy boxes and on the last trip, after the others had gone through and it was just Sirius and Remus standing with an enormous box of vinyls and a small bonsai tree that someone in Remus’s family had apparently given him as a thoughtful gift, Sirius said, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t be Flooing.’

 

‘What should we do?’ Remus asked. ‘We’re not supposed to Apparate. Ministry orders.’ He made a face and took a pull from bottle number six.

 

Sirius took the bottle and had another drink. Remus’s mouth was stained purple. ‘Ah, day drinking,’ Sirius opined. ‘What could be better?’

 

‘I don’t know,’ Remus said, ‘maybe being sober enough to move this stuff?’

 

‘Come on,’ Sirius said, and he reached out and took Remus’s hand. ‘I can Apparate us.’

 

‘I thought it was dangerous,’ Remus said. The junction of their hands was sweaty and gritty. It was a warm day and the boxes had come from the backroom of a nearby cornershop.

 

‘Don’t you worry,’ Sirius said, slurring a bit. ‘Got the bonsai?’

 

‘Yes…’

 

Sirius looked over at Remus. ‘Trust me, Moony?’

 

‘Sure, I do,’ Remus said. He gave Sirius’s hand a squeeze, and then Sirius stepped and twirled into the blast of colour that always accompanied Apparition for him. Their hands stayed tightly joined.

 

They set down behind some council flats; Sirius could see an unfamiliar church tower and a castle-looking thing in the distance. Remus let go of his hand and sat down on the ground laughing. He had the bonsai tree in one hand and the bottle of wine in the other, and he laughed so hard that he leaned back and put his head on the ground.

 

‘Get up!’ Sirius snapped. ‘It’s not clean!’

 

Remus laughed even harder at that. ‘I trusted you!’ he choked.

 

‘And we’re in London,’ Sirius informed him. He was pretty sure they were in London. It smelled like London. A big city, at least. ‘Give me a minute to calibrate my internal compass.’

 

That remark seemed to set Remus off further. He was rolling around on the filthy concrete. Sirius pretended to wind up and kick him in the ribs; Remus grabbed his foot and yanked playfully, and Sirius overbalanced and collapsed on top of Remus. ‘You’re crushing me!’ Remus yelled from beneath a pile of Sirius. Sirius’s response was to find the fleshy part of Remus’s upper arm and bite it. They got into a scrap, knocked the bottle of wine over, and then leapt up out of the path of the red liquid. ‘My records!’ Remus bawled, and Sirius snatched up the box he’d dropped and yelled, ‘Save the bonsai!’ Remus grabbed the tree by its pot and just because they could, they sprinted away from the scene of the crime and out to the main street.

 

They emerged onto a bustling sidewalk and Sirius realised where they were: in Stoke Newington. ‘Just a short bus ride from home,’ he told Remus, doing, he felt, a magnificent job of keeping the triumph out of his voice. So they took a bus back to Sirius’s flat – now theirs – holding the box and bonsai and mostly empty bottle of wine. The driver did not seem terribly enthusiastic about them, but they clambered past him, to the back of the bus and up the stairs, where they sat in the top watching the city streets roll by beneath them. When they got back to the flat, the others had gone out for more booze and food and were busy destroying Sirius’s clean kitchen with seemingly dozens of little boxes of takeaway curry. Remus dug out his record player and set it up and played a Muggle record by some band called Madness and everyone danced and drank some more and ate too much curry. Sirius ended the day sitting on the now sticky kitchen floor talking earnestly to Lily about something that he wouldn’t remember in the morning while Remus and Peter faced off against James and Emmy in a furious game of Broom Race. Sirius couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so happy.

 

 

For the first two weeks, Sirius was too embarrassed to mention his new domestic habits. They didn’t quite square with the projection of himself that he wanted Remus to see. He’d clean things out of Remus’s sight and suggest takeaway every night for dinner. He’d borrowed some money from James and was trying to look for a job, but beyond reading and rejecting the classifieds in the Daily Prophet every morning over breakfast, he wasn’t making a lot of progress.

 

‘They’re just not right for me,’ he’d say to Remus, who was inevitably reading some book about his research. Or, more commonly: ‘They wouldn’t hire me anyway.’ Or: ‘I’ll check back on that one if it’s there tomorrow.’ Remus would listen very patiently, and nod, and go back to reading.

 

Then Remus would go wherever it was that Remus went, and Sirius would clean the flat thoroughly, and maybe go out and walk around town.  Sometimes he would take one of Remus’s books over to Primrose Hill or Regent’s Park and lie out on the grass reading (he was pleasantly surprised to learn that academic texts were not terrible to read; maybe he should apply for further education?), but if it was raining, he would come back to the flat and sit on the couch and listen to Quidditch games on the radio. He started carrying an old pocketwatch that had belonged to his grandfather with him so he could check for when Remus would come home.

 

Then Remus would return from wherever it was that he went, and they would decide what takeaway they wanted for dinner, and they would walk down to the shops to get it, sometimes stopping by a pub or one of Camden’s recently ubiquitous market stalls full of vinvyls. They would return home, put on a record, eat, talk about nothing in particular, put on more records, and eventually Remus would say that he needed to get to bed. Sirius would drift to his own bed and fall asleep, somehow exhausted despite having done nothing. One weekend, James and Lily made a surprise visit, and they all went out and walked up Primrose Hill with a picnic lunch and the radio. Muggles played cricket and rugby and football on the grass below; families walked with dogs and toddlers on leashes; the four of them lay back on the picnic blanket and looked up at the bleached blue sky and watched Muggle jetliners cut across it, leaving fluffy streamers of contrails. It was perfect, Sirius thought, and he knew that it wouldn’t last. The problem with perfection, he thought, was the realisation that whatever came next would never live up to it.

 

Remus came home one night and when Sirius suggested takeaway he frowned. ‘Eating takeaway every night is getting pretty expensive,’ Remus said. ‘Why don’t we cook something? You’ve got all this food here and even though you keep putting preservation spells on it, it’s eventually going to go bad.’

 

Sirius froze, feeling as if he’d been caught in the act of robbing a charity or murdering a bus full of schoolchildren. ‘I guess we could make something simple,’ he said, trying for nonchalance.

 

‘You own what, six or seven cookbooks?’ Remus asked, and he reached beneath the couch and pulled them out of the place that Sirius had thought was a brilliant hiding place. ‘We can probably fit them on this shelf if we stack them horizontally,’ Remus added, crossing to the bookshelf and placing them there.

 

‘Oh,’ Sirius said, absolutely sure that he was fooling no one, ‘that’s a great idea. I didn’t think of that.’

 

Remus had flipped one of the books open and was going through it. ‘I think we’ve got the ingredients to make this,’ he said, holding it open to lasagne.

 

‘Sounds great,’ Sirius said. ‘I just… you know, it seemed easier to get takeaway.’

 

‘That’s ok,’ Remus said brightly. ‘If we work together, this should take even less time!’

 

As per usual, Remus was correct. Remus was playing a 7” by the Leyton Buzzards, a Muggle band, who had a song that was inspired by another song by another Muggle band, the Specials. As Sirius set the vegetables to chopping, Remus propped himself up on the counter and browned the meat on the hob, chattering away about the band, about the music scene, about the band that had inspired this band and how they had met. Sirius listened, put the record on again, listened to the song more closely. He felt like it gained more depth when Remus told him those kinds of things about it. Remus left the sauce heating and went to find the record by the Specials. They played that one. Sirius dug out a bottle of wine to add to the sauce, then poured a glass for each of them. He put it into the new wineglasses he’d bought early on in his unemployment. They were very nice.

 

‘You were always the cool one with music,’ he said, as they sat down to eat.

 

‘Blame my mum,’ Remus said with a smile. ‘Don’t you remember, she used to send me the NME every week?’

 

Sirius nodded. Remus’s mum was Muggle born, and had always struck Sirius as being immensely cool. ‘And records, sometimes.’

 

‘Remember when I played Abbey Road for James and he played it over and over for a week straight?’ Remus asked.

 

Sirius burst into laughter. ‘And then he said he couldn’t wait for them to record their next album.’

 

‘Poor James,’ Remus said. ‘I played him some Wings record but it just wasn’t the same.’ Remus took a bite and looked thoughtful. ‘You know, this lasagne is really good.’

 

‘Could use a bit more seasoning, maybe,’ Sirius said. He hesitated. ‘Like rosemary or something.’

 

‘That would be delicious,’ Remus said.

 

Sirius hesitated again. ‘You don’t think it’s weird that I know that?’

 

Remus’s eyes met Sirius’s across the table and for just a second they were very serious. Then Remus smiled, and he said, ‘Sirius, don’t worry. You’re very good at projecting that you’re a posh twat who doesn’t give a fuck and rides a big fuck-off motorcycle instead of a broom.’

 

Sirius rolled his eyes. ‘I don’t give a fuck.’

 

Remus laughed. ‘Keep telling yourself that, Padfoot, really, do. I’m sure it absolutely _slays_ the ladies.’

 

‘You know it does,’ Sirius said.

 

Remus’s eyes glittered. ‘Personally, I prefer to have a flatmate who knows how to cook and clean.’

 

‘Oh shut the fuck up,’ Sirius said, but he found that he was smiling anyway.

 

‘So not to gloss over your deep-seated personality issues,’ Remus said, and he said it in a way that was clearly meant to sound casual but he couldn’t stop himself from grinning, and Sirius thought, fuck, that’s adorable, and leaned forward to hear the next part of the joke, ‘but I’ve got a job opportunity for you.’

 

Sirius blinked. Well. That had put the conversation back to a place he wasn’t enthusiastic about it going. He wanted to return to the point where there was banter. ‘I don’t know, Moony,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I can get hired anywhere. I mean, it’s tough to say that you got fired from the Ministry…’

 

That serious look was back on Remus’s face. ‘So what are you going to do?’ he asked.  ‘Keep borrowing money off James?’

 

Sirius shrugged. ‘Someday I’ll get a pretty sizeable inheritance.’

 

‘That’s probably not an ideal long-term financial strategy,’ Remus said. In spite of the topic, Sirius liked the way Remus said it; his voice was so gentle, but underneath it there was steel. Sirius thought, I forgot what being around Moony was like. He remembered how it was at school: only Moony could make him think twice about whatever bad shit he was about to do or had done. And Moony always did it that same way: a gentle touch, but underneath it the hard, unyielding surface of Moony’s good-person-ness. Or good werewolf-ness, whatever you wanted to call it: Moony was good.

 

‘On the contrary, I think the long-term-ness of it is probably the main problem with it,’ Sirius mumbled. ‘Despite all the in-breeding, the Blacks are well known for longevity.’ He put down his fork and sighed. ‘What’s this job opportunity?’

 

Remus smiled. ‘It’s at the British Museum, in the magical artefacts section,’ Remus said. ‘So I know someone there who needs a conservation assistant. I told him I knew the perfect person.’

 

‘What?’ Sirius said. ‘Me? What does a conservation assistant even do?’

 

‘You have to be really good at transfiguration,’ Remus said. ‘If you bring that letter you have from McGonagall about what a great student you were, I’m sure that plus my recommendation will work.’

 

‘What do I transfigure?’ Sirius asked. He was panicking, and he didn’t want to probe why. ‘I don’t know the first thing about this, Moony.’

 

‘But you can learn,’ Remus said. ‘Trust me. You’ll be great.’ He beamed, and Sirius understood that term: Remus really did seem to have a lot in common with a very bright, very warm light source. It was blinding. ‘We’ll go over there together tomorrow and I’ll introduce you to the bloke I know. Then you can talk to him and I’m sure you’ll impress him. He’s a former professor of mine.’


	5. Chapter 5

Sirius didn’t sleep well that night, twisting and turning in his sheets, and at six he staggered out of his bedroom and opened the window in the sitting room to let in some air. He put his elbows on the sill to share them with the bonsai tree and breathed in the cool morning air. It was late August, and the first day that he felt definitively that autumn was coming. Eddies of wind swirled down the mews and whipped the rubbish around the skip into a frenzy. Sirius breathed in deeply and tried to calm his pounding heart. _You’re nervous_ , he told himself, _and you don’t want to admit it to yourself. Actually, I just did, so how’s that then?_ He took another deep breath and heard Remus’s voice in his head: ‘Keep telling yourself that, Padfoot.’

 

Sirius met Remus at lunchtime in UCL’s main quad. Remus had emerged from an imposing building on the right side of the quad with an attractive blonde witch with whom he seemed to be enjoying a great joke. He introduced her to Sirius as a fellow PhD student and Sirius shook her hand and wondered if he should try to sleep with her or if Remus was interested in her. Remus tended to keep his romantic cards close to his chest, but Sirius had a feeling that he was probably pretty attractive to these academic types. They said goodbye to her and walked towards the museum. The wind had persisted throughout the day and was tearing down still-green leaves, and Sirius could smell the sharper underlying edge of autumn’s approach.

 

Smell was Sirius’s favourite sense, and had been ever since he’d truly discovered it on 23 October, 1974. That was the day that they’d done the first of the preliminary spells to become Animagi. Remus had been furious with Sirius, who had come up with the whole daft idea, and had stormed out of the room after calling them all idiots for trying it.

 

‘I won’t stand here and watch you do something illegal,’ Remus had snapped at him. ‘You could hurt yourself or worse.’ Sirius had opened his mouth to respond and Remus’s eyes had flashed. He’d put a hand on Sirius’s chest as if to hold him off. ‘And don’t you dare,’ he’d hissed, angrier than Sirius had ever seen him, ‘don’t you _dare_ to tell me that this is for me. This is for you and it always has been.’

 

‘I’d put it at about fifty-fifty, really,’ Sirius had said, as coolly as he could. Then Remus had shoved him, a short, sharp jab, and marched out the door, and Sirius had found that he was breathing as hard as if he’d run a mile.

 

Peter had been nervous and James had looked halfway to agreeing with Remus, but Remus’s anger had only made Sirius want to try it more. He’d known that he’d hit a nerve there and for whatever reason he wanted to keep hitting it. Being fourteen and not exactly into introspection, he had crouched in the centre of the floor of their room, his hands cupped as they should be for this spell, with a heavy tome liberated from the Forbidden Section open before him. 

 

This type of magic had been new to him, and to the others as well; it had required not just intention but emotion behind it. It was a spell that you had to _mean_. And Sirius had. He’d meant it so much that it had ached in his chest. He’d wanted to prove to Remus and to himself and to everyone else that he wasn’t just a fuck up who didn’t belong in Gryffindor. At the time, he’d thought he was making the greatest gesture ever. It was the kind of feeling that one looks back on later in life and cringes, in this case at the sheer naivety that breaking the law and endangering the lives of his friends was somehow proving something about him being a good person.

 

He’d said the first spell, and his whole life had changed. It wasn’t even a particularly difficult spell, in the realm of Animagus magic, although they hadn’t known that at the time. The intent was to identify animal elements within the user; that was it. Later spells were about drawing out those elements, and further spells were about actually transfiguring themselves into things, and finally opening the gate up so that they could do it at will. Regardless of the ease, and the early stage, and the way his heartbeat had still been pulsing through him, so that the emotion he put into it was whatever that feeling was that he’d gotten when Remus had gotten angry, the spell had changed his life. He’d woken up two hours later, curled into a ball on Remus’s bed. Remus had been sitting next to him, a book in his lap, obviously pretending to be reading and failing spectacularly. Sirius had tried to sit up and had found that his limbs worked strangely, so he’d padded around the bed in circles on all fours while Remus gave him an exasperated look.

 

But the thing that had been the most amazing part of it all was his nose. He could smell _everything_ and even better, _everything smelled amazing_. Without thinking, he’d stuck his face right into Remus’s neck and inhaled. _Aaaah_. That had smelled wonderful. Then the flat palm of Remus’s hand had connected with his forehead and shoved him backwards.

 

‘Listen, you,’ Remus had said, and he was obviously trying to sound stern. ‘You lot had me terrified. I came back and found James nuzzling the curtains with his head, making these… these weird noises. He sounded like he was throwing up a furball. Then he passed out. I found Peter in the toilets; he’d eaten something really bad for him and was vomiting everywhere. I cleaned that up, because I am a very, very good friend, and while I was doing that he passed out too. Then I came looking for you and I won’t even tell you what you did when you saw me because it was so – so – disturbing! But when I sat down on the bed rather than deal with it you jumped up here – _on all fours_ – and crawled around in circles annoying me until you finally passed out.’

 

‘But what was I doing?’ Sirius had whined. ‘Remus, I have to know what I was doing! I’m trying to figure out which animal I’m most likely to become!’

 

Remus had put down his book and given Sirius a completely unreadable look.  Years later, Sirius still didn’t know what this look had meant, although there had definitely been sympathy and exasperation and maybe even a little bit of love in there. Then Remus had said, ‘You’re going to be a dog, you idiot. And probably a yappy, annoying one at that.’ He’d bared his teeth at Sirius and had added, ‘I’ll probably eat you in one bite.’

 

Sirius grinned, remembering all of that, and breathed in deeply. Beside him, he saw Remus smile.

 

‘Autumn is on the way,’ Remus said.

 

‘Then, winter, and my birthday,’ Sirius said.

 

‘”The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older, shorter of breath, and one day closer to death”,’ Remus sang.

 

Sirius rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, I see cheerful Remus is here today.’

 

‘Don’t question Pink Floyd,’ Remus said. Sirius noticed that he was looking thoughtful as they exited Russell Square and began to walk down a row of white and brick houses. ‘There’s good things about getting older, anyway.’

 

‘Like what?’

 

‘Wisdom gained?’ Remus suggested. ‘Also with age has come a release from the burden of having to share a bedroom with three smelly schoolboys.’

 

Sirius laughed. ‘And yet you voluntarily decided to share a flat with one of them.’

 

‘Turns out that when that particular individual is isolated from the group, he doesn’t smell. Which is confusing, since he’s a dog.’

 

‘Your canine discrimination isn’t exactly fair.’

 

‘Well, when you can become a majestic wolf, dogs seem a little… beneath you.’

 

‘Typical attitude from a wolf. Of course if it wasn’t for adorable dogs like me providing good public relations, wolves wouldn’t be getting very far with their “oh look, we’re beautiful and endangered, save us!” campaign.’

 

‘But we are beautiful and endangered,’ Remus said solemnly. ‘I mean, look at me.’

 

They had just rounded a corner and Sirius became aware of a very large building on his right. He looked through the high wrought iron fence and saw a lot of classical architecture. ‘What is this?’

 

‘The British Museum!’ Remus said. ‘Your future place of employment, hopefully!’

 

Sirius remembered why they were there and immediately felt sick. The building was immense and intimidating, with lots of statues peering down from above the portico and judging him. Remus led him through the front doors, through an entryway, up some wide stone steps, and eventually down a hallway to a small, innocuous-looking door. They stopped outside the door and Sirius took several deep breaths.

 

Remus turned and looked at him. ‘Here,’ he said kindly. ‘Let’s walk around for a minute.’ He led Sirius into a gallery full of swords and sat down on a bench.

 

‘Are we late?’ Sirius fretted. ‘I don’t want to be late.’

 

‘No,’ Remus said. He was using his Voice Of Extreme Patience. Sirius hadn’t heard that one in a while. It always made him want to simultaneously apologise and commit an act of petty rebellion. He looked around for a rubbish bin to set alight.

 

‘I’m sorry. It’s just…’

 

‘Just what?’ Remus asked in the same voice. ‘I promise you, this is going to be fine.’

 

Sirius shrugged helplessly and fought the urge to pace. ‘You’re so successful,’ he said.

 

‘Thank you,’ Remus said. ‘You are too.’

 

‘I’m not,’ Sirius snapped. ‘Look at it this way. James is married to the woman of his dreams, he’s employed and enjoys his job, they’ve got a really nice flat and I think he said something about how they were talking about having a baby? And you’re accepted to do a doctorate, you’ve got a first from Oxford and now you’re doing what you love. And Peter – even Peter – ‘

 

Remus shook his head, lips pursed. ‘I’m  trying to be sympathetic. So don’t be an ass about Peter.’

 

‘But you know what I mean.’ Remus raised his eyebrows and Sirius huffed and looked away, aware that he was being a prat and not knowing how to stop himself. ‘The point is, he’s happy with his girlfriend, and he’s successful at what he’s doing, and happy. And then there’s me. Fired from the Ministry – ‘

 

‘Sirius.’ Sirius stopped and looked at Remus, who had shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. ‘Listen,’ he said, opening his eyes. ‘I know that this seems insurmountable right now. I know that you wanted to be an Auror.’

 

‘Did I?’ Sirius demanded. ‘If I wanted it so badly, why didn’t I just do what I was asked?’

 

‘Things change,’ Remus said. He was so unbelievably calm. Against his will, Sirius could feel himself calming down as well. ‘You wanted to be an Auror until you didn’t, because you realised that what you thought being an Auror was wasn’t what they think it is.’

 

‘Yeah,’ Sirius admitted. ‘That’s true.’

 

‘And now I’m guessing you don’t know what you want.’

 

Sirius rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, yes, all true. Aren’t I a cliché straight out of a song?’

 

‘So let me give you a “career opportunity”,’ Remus suggested with a smile. ‘I met the curator of magical objects at a conference. His name is Jonathan Woodward and he’s a wonderful scholar.’

 

Sirius raised an eyebrow.

 

‘You know what I mean, very successful,’ Remus said quickly. ‘Sorry, academic-speak. But he’s also just a really nice person. And so when I saw that he had this position open, I thought about you, and I came over to see him, and told him about you, and he thinks you’ll be great. So you just have go in there and convince him –‘

 

‘Why would I be great?’ Sirius interjected.

 

‘Convince him that I’m right,’ Remus finished. ‘Because conservation requires a lot of skill in transfiguration, which you are bloody brilliant at, and it requires someone who is incredibly patient and can concentrate on a single task for hours.’

 

‘That sounds nothing like me,’ Sirius said flatly.

 

Remus stood up and gave Sirius a little push on the back, in the direction of the hallway and the little door. ‘Just tell him about how you fixed up that motorcycle,’ he said. ‘I know you’ll do fine.’

 

 

The interview went well. Sirius had no idea what Remus had told Professor Woodward about him, but whatever it was, he had the job within five minutes and was being shown the conservation lab. Sirius could work whatever hours he wanted, so long as he worked twenty hours a week, in a special Muggle-proof area of the lab. There were two other conservation assistants for magical objects, but Sirius didn’t meet either of them as they apparently kept strange hours. Woodward was like some stereotype of a mad professor, with hair that stuck up at all angles and enormous thick spectacles that hung on a gold chain down over his tweed jacket. He referred to Professor McGonagall as ‘Minerva’ and reminisced at length about something vaguely illegal that they had done involving transfiguring turtles when they were at Hogwarts. Their meeting concluded with the Professor informing Sirius that the Ministry was far too conservative and that he deeply respected a man who spoke his mind and damn the Ministry goons, which Sirius guessed was a veiled reference to his firing from the Auror office.

 

When Sirius came back out into the main part of the museum, he found Remus sitting on the same bench, reading a book. He smiled and gave him a thumbs up, still not quite sure if he believed it himself. He tried to imagine what his classmates – or former colleagues in the Auror office – would have said if they knew that he, Sirius Black, truant and general bad boy extraordinaire, was going to be working in a museum handling precious artefacts.

 

They went out for a celebratory dinner at a small Italian restaurant in Cambridge Circus. Remus footed the bill but Sirius promised to pay him back – the pay at his new job was surprisingly good, even though it was only part-time.

 

‘Moony,’ he said, before the wine had even been poured, ‘I really, really appreciate it.’ The fact that Remus had thought of Sirius for the job and then gone so far as to come meet someone he’d only met once to convince him to give it to Sirius…

 

Remus smiled back at him and said, ‘It’s no trouble at all. I know that it’s not what you would have wanted.’

 

‘It’s fine,’ Sirius promised. ‘It’s going to be great.’

 

Their meal was good and the bottle of wine between them was good, and they headed out into the night the perfect level of tipsy. It wasn’t a long walk back to the flat so they set off, through a gentle misting rain, roughly following the path of the Northern Line below their feet. When they got home, they said goodnight and went their separate ways.

 

Sirius went into his room and changed into his pyjamas, but he felt itchy and restless, like he didn’t want the night to end. He wandered out of his bedroom, but it wasn’t really a wander, more an inspection of the general perimeter of the flat that was meant to be casual but he was taking very seriously – like a dog making the rounds of his neighbourhood, seemingly sniffing anything at random, but really following a system, a complex and crucial system – or so Sirius always told himself as he set about straightening books, shifting the couch just so, and checking the deadbolt twice. He finished in the kitchen, with the idea that he was going to make tea, and Remus would smell the tea, and have to come drink it, and the night wouldn’t end just yet –

 

He tugged on the chain to turn on the kitchen light and caught Remus in the act of drinking out of the milk carton.

 

Remus’s eyes opened wide and he lowered the milk. ‘Oh, hiya Padfoot.’

 

‘Hi,’ Sirius said, trying not to laugh. ‘So is this what you do when you think I’m not looking?’

 

Remus put the milk back into the fridge, shut the door neatly, and said, ‘This is the first time, I swear.’

 

Sirius snorted. ‘I bet you say that to all the girls. Are you going to buy us some new milk?’

 

‘Can’t,’ Remus said, the picture of apology, ‘I’m going out to my parents’ tomorrow.’

 

 _Full moon_ , Sirius thought, and felt a pang that he wouldn’t be there. Ever since they’d left Hogwarts, Remus had spent the full moon at his parents’ house, where they had some sort of system or cellar or something; Remus didn’t talk about it and Sirius didn’t feel like he could ask, although he had a terrible morbid curiosity about the whole process and often spent much of the full moon night thinking about it. Now, he remembered the cages in the barn and then shoved that thought to the back of his mind. ‘So you’ll have absolutely no time to go to the shop, which I might add is actually underneath our flat, and pick up a carton of milk, even though you just defiled that one by slobbering all over it?’

 

Remus rolled his eyes. ‘So dramatic, Padfoot,’ he said, ‘and no, I won’t, because I told my mum and dad I’d have breakfast with them.’ He gave Sirius his most winning smile. Sirius knew that one too, and narrowed his eyes. ‘My mum invited you for breakfast too,’ Remus added.

 

‘Did she.’ Not a question.

 

‘Promise.’

 

‘So when I show up tomorrow and drink all of her milk –‘ Sirius crossed to the kettle and tapped it with his wand to set it boiling. ‘—she won’t mind at all?’

 

‘She might be confused,’ Remus admitted, ‘but only about why you’re being so dreadfully rude when you’re usually the picture of good manners.’ He paused as Sirius took two mugs out of the drying rack and dropped teabags into them. ‘Ooh, are we having tea?’

 

‘Well since you – I mean we – have such a lazy day planned for tomorrow, I thought we might stay up a bit more,’ Sirius said. He poured the hot water and they both inhaled the tea-scented steam at the same time.

 

They retired to the sitting room/dining room – the main room of the flat – and sat on opposite ends of the couch. Remus drew his feet up and held his tea under his nose, the picture of contentment. That made Sirius contented – that and the smell of his own tea.

 

‘I was just so proud of you,’ Remus blurted. Sirius blinked, startled. ‘For quitting the Ministry, I mean.’ Remus buried his head in his tea steam and smiled. ‘Maybe that was a stupid thing to say. But I wanted you to know that just because you’re not… you know, that you’re not a failure.’

 

‘Oh,’ Sirius said, equal parts embarrassed and complimented. ‘Well, I, you know, just acted on impulse. You know me. Can’t take orders from authority, that kind of thing.’

 

‘But sometimes that’s good,’ Remus said fervently. ‘Especially the Ministry. They’re using the war as an excuse to grab power.’

 

‘Wow,’ Sirius said, ‘I never in my life thought I’d hear you tell me not to listen to authority.’

 

‘That’s because until quite recently the main authority in your life was Gryffindor Prefect Remus Lupin,’ Remus said, and they grinned at each other. ‘And anyway, it’s not like I didn’t encourage subverting authority.’

 

‘Oh Moony,’ Sirius said, still grinning, almost helpless to stop himself. ‘How are you just so… you’re so…’

 

‘Dashing? Clever? Witty?’

 

Sirius waved his hand. ‘Besides all that. You’re just so… competent.’ He realised that wasn’t quite the compliment he had wanted it to be and tried to backtrack. ‘If you’d have been me, by which I mean if I was you, or rather had your personality, then I wouldn’t be fired and probably everything would be ok and the Aurors wouldn’t even consider using Unforgivables. I mean, you’re always so in control of every situation.’

 

Remus got very still, and it took him such a long time to answer that Sirius grew nervous. Finally, he said, ‘I think that’s what I have to do, being a werewolf.’ He smiled, and Sirius thought, _you have so many different kinds of smiles_. ‘It’s not that great a skill. I just like to make certain that no one is asking me too many questions that I can’t answer.’

 

‘Well,’ Sirius said, trying to tread carefully, ‘I still think it’s an amazing skill.’

 

Remus took a long drink of tea and Sirius stared at the carpet by the door. It really was a fantastically ugly shade of teal.

 

‘So we’re even, then?’ Remus said suddenly, and when Sirius looked back him he was smiling again. This was a sweet smile. ‘We’ve said nice things to each other and now I don’t have to buy any new milk?’

 

‘That’s not,’ Sirius said, ‘how this works.’ He wanted to say, _I wish we would say nice things to each other more_. ‘Then again, if it’s a compliments-for-Moony-bacteria-on-the-milk barter economy, I guess I could get behind that.’

 

‘I got you a job today,’ Remus reminded him. ‘And I promise to never tell James about you freaking out in the swords gallery so long as you never bother me about the milk again.’

 

Sirius agreed, but lying in bed an hour later, he didn’t think that Remus would ever have told James anyway. James and Peter came from such normal families, had such normal lives; Sirius and Remus were the slightly broken ones and when it came down to it, he thought, they understood each other in a way that the others never could. 


	6. Chapter 6

The conservation job turned out to be just like most jobs, sometimes boring, sometimes interesting, often completely mundane. The other conservation assistants seemed to be, well, a little bit weird – they kept odd hours and seemed to be trying to avoid contact with Sirius completely. He couldn’t say that he minded too much – he liked having the lab to himself, when he could put on the wireless and not have to make awkward small talk, and as the days went on he found himself working out their schedules so as to avoid them as well.

 

Sometimes this policy of working alone did have drawbacks, however. Sometimes an object would be delicate enough that an extra set of hands or extra wand would be very much needed. Sometimes an object would be waiting for him that he knew nothing about, could not even place in the canon of known civilisations, and he would have to do some fairly intense research to understand where it had come from and what he should do with it. And then, sometimes, an object would have a curse placed upon it and he would wind up in a situation that could range from mild annoyance to mortal peril.

 

The latter was the case with a newly acquired piece of Roman household pottery that had arrived from a dig in North Africa. It was in six fragments of varying size, and Sirius was tasked with putting it back together. As far as he could tell, the pottery – some kind of water vessel done in a dull reddish brown clay – was one of the most boring pieces he’d ever seen. He imagined the disappointment of the archaeologist who had found it as he held the pieces in the air with a gentle levitation spell and dug into their crystal structure, trying to find the best way to knit them together. He had all six pieces in the air and had just connected the first two to form the lip of the vessel when he felt the familiar foreboding of a curse.

 

‘Goddammit,’ he muttered, as the lip suddenly turned into a hissing snake. ‘Really?’ he demanded, casting the snake out of reach of his nose. ‘Who would bother to put a curse on this piece of rubbish?’ The snake hissed and twisted, and he ducked out of its reach and said, ‘Ancient Roman who did this, you were the worst kind of person. I’m glad you’re dead, and your ugly water jar is broken.’

 

There was a knock at the door. This was exceedingly peculiar, as everyone who used the room had a key. Sirius laid the pieces back on the table and held off the snake with his wand, then called, “Come in!”

 

The door opened and a man he didn’t recognise came through it. He was probably ten years older than Sirius, with a face that Sirius instantly wanted to like. ‘Heya,’ he said, ‘can I ask you a favour?’, and then his eyes widened, and he said, ‘Oh my god, is that a snake?’

 

Sirius realised a second too late that the man was a Muggle. He opened his mouth and couldn’t think of a thing to say.

 

‘That stick you’re holding it off with is terribly flimsy,’ the man continued, staring at Sirius’s wand.

 

Sirius still couldn’t think of anything to say, and the snake was advancing on him.

 

‘Here,’ the man said suddenly, and, with a fluid motion, he stepped forward and grabbed the snake behind the head. He flung it into an intact piece of pottery, where it immediately coiled up as if to strike out and started hissing. Sirius grabbed a thick tome on Anglo-Saxon coins and placed it over the top of the pot, sealing the snake inside.

 

‘God, that was really impressive,’ Sirius said, surreptitiously hiding his wand in his coat with the other.

 

The man let out a whoosh of air and said, ‘Glad you think so. I’m shaking.’ He held up one hand to demonstrate. ‘Where did it come from?’ he asked.

 

‘Uhm,’ Sirius said, not sure if Muggles dealt with these things but remembering vaguely from the discovery of Tut’s tomb that they did, ‘ancient Roman curse?’

 

The man let out a startled laugh. ‘No, really. Did it come in the packaging?’

 

‘Yes,’ Sirius amended, nodding vigorously. ‘I just opened this box,’ he said, gesturing at the wooden box full of packing material that the pot had arrived in, ‘and he came slithering out when I wasn’t looking.’

 

‘I’m shocked customs didn’t catch it,’ the man said.

 

Sirius nodded, trying to get his heart to slow its panicked beating, glad that the man seemed not to have noticed any magical goings on. The last thing he needed was a sanction from the Ministry for breaking magical law. ‘So, uhm, what did you come in here for? Do you work in conservation?’

 

‘No,’ said the man, and he got a strange look on his face that Sirius couldn’t interpret. ‘I’m actually here to ask a favour – I’ve been going around to all the departments, asking anyone about, but everyone has turned me down…’

 

‘What’s the favour?’ Sirius asked. ‘Sounds like it’s not good.’

 

The man sighed. ‘No, it’s not.’

 

‘Well,’ Sirius said, suddenly anxious that they leave before the man noticed that the room was full of very bizarre, magical things, ‘you did just save me from a snake and all. I’m sure I can help you.’

 

‘Wait until you hear what you’re letting yourself in for,’ the man said. He held out a hand. ‘Graham Waterman’s my name.’ 

 

Sirius shook it. ‘Sirius Black.’

 

‘Sirius?’ the man repeated. ‘That’s quite the unusual name. The dog star, right?’

 

Sirius, who had never in his life thought of his name as anything but an excuse for James to make bad puns about his sincerity, said, ‘Yes, that’s right.’

 

‘Well, Sirius, I work in the department of the museum that puts together talks and things like that. Public outreach.’ He sighed. ‘And I got this crazy idea a few months ago that we should do some outreach to, well, to school children.’

 

‘Ok,’ Sirius said. ‘Won’t they get bored?’

 

‘Well,’ Graham said, ‘I think we’ve got some things they might like. Swords, skeletons, mummies, that kind of thing. Anyway, everyone else thought I was crazy, but I put together a programme and convinced a local teacher to bring her class by.’ He sighed again. ‘They’ve just arrived for the very first children’s outreach I’ve ever done, and… my assistant saw them and said he was quitting.’

 

‘Oh no,’ Sirius said sympathetically, not having any idea where this was going.

 

‘Yes,’ Graham said, and he looked up at Sirius and made an exaggerated wince. ‘So you see the favour.’

 

‘I’m sorry, I don’t…’

 

‘I need someone to help teach them.’

 

Sirius had just ushered them out of the door and locked it behind him. Going right back through would certainly be ridiculous… right? ‘Uh, what would that entail?’

 

‘Well,’ Graham said, ‘it shouldn’t be too hard. I’m dividing them up into two groups. The first group will go upstairs to hear a little talk in the Egypt rooms, and the second group will stay downstairs in the lecture room, where we’ll do a geometry activity about the pyramids.’ He gave Sirius a look remarkably similar to the one that Remus got when he wanted the last bite of whatever Sirius was eating. Sirius could never resist that look.

 

‘I don’t know a thing about geometry…’ he tried.

 

‘Oh, that’s fine, you can do the talk. I’m sure you know more about the ancient Egyptians than I do!’

 

Sirius had spent one lunch break wandering through the ancient Egyptian section with Remus when it was too rainy to take a walk outside, and he was certain that Professor Binns had mentioned the Egyptians in passing, but he’d be fucked if he could remember a word of it. ‘Uhm,’ he said. ‘Well…’ Graham gave him the pleading look again, and Sirius shrugged and said, ‘I’ll do my best.’

 

Half an hour later, he was standing between thirty ten year olds and a glass case full of dead people wrapped in linen. He wasn’t sure which crowd was tougher. The children stared up at him with wide eyes and their teacher – a very pretty dark-haired woman – was also staring at him, expectantly. He assumed the mummies wore the same expression. He took a deep breath, took another one, searched his memory for any tidbits Remus might have offered when they were here last – unfortunately they seemed to have been talking about quidditch for most of the time that they were in this room – and launched into a little speech about Everything He Knew About Mummies.

 

When he had finished, he took another deep breath. The children and teacher were still staring at him. ‘So, uhm, any questions?’ he tried.

 

‘Were there really curses like that?’ one of the children asked, breathless.

 

Sirius hesitated, glanced at the teacher. She shook her head at him, but she was smiling. He had no idea what that meant, except that she probably fancied him a bit. ‘Oh yes,’ he said.

 

‘And did they really mummify their pet cats?’ another asked.

 

‘Cats, and crocodiles, and other things,’ Sirius said, proud of one of the few facts he knew. ‘Would you like to see them?’ He led them into the next room and showed them the case full of small mummified animals. They crowded around it, putting their hands on the glass and oohing and aahing. The teacher put a hand on Sirius’s elbow and when he looked around at her she gave him a dazzling smile. ‘Were you trained as a teacher?’ she asked him. ‘You were wonderful!’

 

‘Actually, it’s my first day,’ he said.

 

 

‘So you’re going to help out this person Graham now?’ Remus asked. ‘Whenever there are children about?’ He looked up from the kitchen floor, which he had been scrubbing for the last few minutes.

 

‘Seems like it,’ Sirius said. ‘Since the conservation job is only part time, it can fill in the other time. Also in future I’ll have the opportunity to prepare for what I’m going to be doing, so that’ll make it easier.’ He leaned back against the counter and rubbed his arm, sore from cleaning the sink. ‘This no magic thing is utter shit!’

 

Remus rocked back on his heels and shoved his hair out of his eyes. ‘This is awful,’ he agreed.

 

A pamphlet from the Ministry of Magic had arrived in the post – _the Muggle post_ – that afternoon, informing them (and presumably residents of every other wizarding dwelling in Britain) that magic use should be limited in the home, as it could be traced and draw Death Eater attention. Unfortunately that had coincided with the second Wednesday of the month, which was when Sirius and Remus had a general agreement to thoroughly clean the flat.

 

‘So you liked it?’ Remus asked. ‘The whole teaching kids thing?’

 

‘Well,’ Sirius said, ‘yeah. Is that weird?’

 

Remus shrugged, but he was smiling. ‘Good training for the little Potter thing that’s going to be appearing in our lives soon enough.’

 

‘These were ten year olds, Remus. Not babies.’

 

‘Oh, now you’re the expert.’

 

‘I’ve certainly got more knowledge on the topic than you do!’

 

Remus opened his mouth to make some doubtless very witty retort, but a knock at the front door stopped him. Sirius, who was not on his hands and knees on the kitchen floor, crossed into the hall and opened the door.

 

‘Heya,’ said Peter. He, Emmy, James, and Lily were all standing in the hallway, shaking off umbrellas.

 

‘To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?’ Sirius asked.

 

‘Are you cleaning?’ James said, muscling his way into the room and looking around in exaggerated shock. ‘Did the health inspectorate contact you and make some demands or something?’

 

‘Fuck off, Prongs,’ Remus yelled from the kitchen.

 

‘So we’ve got these very mysterious letters,’ Lily said matter-of-factly. She had an envelope in her hand. ‘Have you checked your post recently?’

 

‘Yeah, this afternoon, why?’

 

‘Receive anything about a meeting?’ James asked.

 

Sirius shook his head. Behind him, he heard Remus come into the room.

 

‘Hm,’ said James. ‘Well my letter did suggest that I bring along anyone who I thought might be interested… which is why I’ve invited Peter and Emmy…’

 

‘Meeting about what?’ Remus asked.

 

James and Lily glanced at each other. Peter, who was holding Emmeline’s hand tightly, looked at his shoes, while she looked to him. ‘Well,’ Lily said, ‘seems like it’s a meeting about… doing something about Voldemort.’

 

‘For the Ministry?’ Sirius asked, and he was sure his voice came out more demanding than he’d meant.

 

‘No,’ Lily said. ‘Not exactly. It seems like an independent outfit.’

 

‘Is this Dumbledore’s group, then?’ Remus asked. He stepped forward and took Lily’s envelope.

 

Lily nodded. ‘I think so, yeah.’

 

Sirius flicked his gaze to Remus, who was scanning the short piece of parchment that had been in the envelope. He looked up and met Sirius’s eyes, his lips pursed, and said, ‘We’ll meet you there, all right?’

 

‘Sounds good mate,’ said James. Sirius was dimly aware of the four of them trooping back out the door, but he kept his gaze on Remus, who followed them into the hallway and shut and bolted the door behind them.

 

‘What’s this all about then?’ Sirius asked, annoyed. ‘Was anyone going to tell me about this?’

 

Remus sighed. ‘Probably not if you were still an Auror,’ he said. ‘It came up last year, and it was agreed that Ministry employees weren’t… safe.’

 

‘Came up with whom?’ Sirius demanded. ‘And why aren’t we – they – safe?’

 

Remus frowned. ‘Well, the Imperius curse for one. And for another, this is operating way outside the bounds of the legal system if we go through with it.’

 

Sirius looked Remus up and down and narrowed his eyes. He had the feeling that something large had been kept from him, and he certainly did not like it. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let me make you a cup of tea and you can explain this to me.’

 

Remus hesitated for just a second and Sirius almost bared his teeth, but then Remus said, ‘Sure, let’s do that. The meeting isn’t until nine.’

 

‘Have these people no respect for those of us with nine to fives,’ Sirius asked, trying to make a joke, and Remus smiled, but the mirth in no way reached his eyes. Then again, maybe it just hadn’t been a very good joke.

 

In the kitchen, Remus gathered up the cleaning materials while Sirius made them tea. When it seemed to Sirius that Remus had delayed saying anything for as long as humanly possible, he said, ‘Are you going to tell me or not?’

 

Remus took his tea and sat down at the table. ‘So there’s this group. It was set up by Dumbledore and some others. Professor McGonagall, some people not from Hogwarts who you wouldn’t know. They started out just openly opposing the rather ugly views that Voldemort and his followers were espousing back when he was just a young ideologue.’

 

‘So views like those of my parents,’ Sirius said, trying to keep his hand from shaking where it held the teacup. ‘And my brother.’

 

Remus met his eyes. ‘Yes, exactly.’

 

‘Is that why I wasn’t told?’

 

‘Back then? Presumably. But I’m talking about when we were children, and even before we were born. My parents and James’ were some of the earliest members.’ He looked away, out the window at the encroaching dusk. ‘My father was a journalist, you know, who used to speak out against those ideas.’

 

Sirius shook his head, surprised. ‘I had no idea.’

 

‘Yeah,’ Remus said, now looking into his teacup. ‘He quit when someone acted on the threats to his family.’ He looked up and Sirius found he could not look away from him. Remus had never before mentioned anything about how he became a werewolf, except that he had been a small child, too young to remember the time before. ‘I almost died,’ Remus said flatly. ‘When I was finally able to leave St Mungo’s, he and my mother left the movement completely and moved to the remote village my mother grew up in – where they live now, where I grew up.’

 

‘Jesus,’ Sirius said. ‘I had no idea.’

 

‘No,’ Remus said. He turned his head away and said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever shared that particular information with anyone, though I think it’s fairly common knowledge among the older members of the group.’ He took a deep breath. Sirius could see that his knuckles were white where they wrapped around the handle of the teacup. He wanted to reach out, to somehow comfort Remus, to let him know that he appreciated the telling of it, but felt the physical space between them like a great gulf and decided against it.

 

‘So,’ Remus continued, ‘as I said, initially they were just there to vocally oppose Voldemort and his followers. But you’ve been following the tides of this movement as well as I have in the last few years and you’ve seen that things are escalating now, beyond the point of rhetoric. You certainly saw it first hand as an Auror.’

 

Sirius nodded, realising now that, as Aurors, they’d been in training to fight a war that people like Moody and his other instructors had seen as inevitable. Not for the first – and he was certain not for the last either – time, he wished that he’d been more aware of his surroundings and less wrapped up in the problems inside his own head. ‘So you think this group headed by Dumbledore is going to move beyond rhetoric too?’

 

Remus sighed, and Sirius suddenly saw in him a much older man, with his hair streaked with silver and lines around his mouth and in the creases beside his eyes. For a second, he had a flash of how his heart would break beyond repair if he somehow lost Remus from his life. He did put out a hand now and place it on Remus’s arm. Remus flicked his eyes up to him and gave him a little smile, then laid his hand briefly over Sirius’s and gave it a squeeze before taking up his teacup. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Quite simply, I do think that’s what we’re moving towards,’ he said. ‘Last year, when you were still working for the Aurors, Dumbledore called a meeting. I went, and my parents, and James and his parents, and he brought Lily. The meeting was to gauge the interest of people who would be willing to take that step.’

 

‘What did James say? And Lily?’ He squeezed Remus’s arm tightly. ‘What did you say?’

 

‘They said yes,’ Remus said. He hesitated, and then he sighed again. ‘I said no.’

 

‘Is that why you didn’t get another letter? Why did you say no?’

 

‘I suspect so, yes,’ Remus said. ‘And I said no because my father asked me not to do it.’

 

Their eyes met for a few seconds and then Remus quirked his lips. ‘But now,’ he said softly, ‘well, I might have made the wrong decision.’

 

Sirius licked his suddenly dry lips. ‘I can understand why your father would ask you.’

 

Remus nodded.

 

‘He’s obviously scared to lose you, since he almost did.’

 

‘Oh yes,’ Remus said. ‘I know.’

 

‘But you want to… to fight.’ The hairs on the back of Sirius’s neck tingled like mad, aware that they were treading on talk that amounted to war.

 

‘I’m not the first to say it,’ Remus said softly, ‘but there comes a time when people of good conscience have to stand up for what they believe is right.’ He smiled at Sirius. ‘You demonstrated that to me, defying the Ministry.’

 

‘It wasn’t planned, I promise you,’ Sirius said.

 

‘Maybe that makes it more sincere,’ Remus said. ‘But I’ve been thinking about my decision ever since.’ He gently disengaged his arm from Sirius’s hand and reached across the table to look again at the letter from the Ministry. ‘People are scared. Something big is coming. I think that I can’t stand still any longer.’

 

Sirius took a deep breath. He felt light headed, but also curiously calm. ‘Then I’m coming with you.’

 


	7. Chapter 7

By late December, it had become immensely obvious to Sirius that being a freedom fighter in a secret war was not all glamorous postings to exotic locales and gorgeous women fawning over minor but rugged battle scars. He had just struggled home from eight hours of a fruitless stake out of an abandoned East End factory, through a drenching sleet, across a London full of tube delays and stressed out Christmas shoppers, and was battling a major cold. He had to go to the museum in six hours, work on conserving a fabulous new find from nomads in Kamchatka that Professor Woodward had said might rewrite the history of the peopling of the Americas, and then spend four hours with sixty Muggle school children from a disadvantaged neighbourhood. He had walked in the door and immediately slumped across the couch, holding a tissue to his nose and shivering violently. He suspected that he was running quite a high fever but not even magic had yet sorted a cure for the common cold, so unless this beast turned out to be plague – something he wasn’t yet ready to rule out, based on how he felt – he had no way of treating himself. And the worst part of it was that, as he had sat for eight hours, soaked to the bone and trying to stifle a cough, he’d had the strongest possible feeling that something very, very bad was going down inside the warehouse but he could find neither scale nor claw of it.

 

The window flew open, and Remus came through it, on his broomstick, and smashed headlong into the coffee table. Sirius’s shot nerves had him on his feet, wand at the ready, before Remus had even finished collapsing through the wood of the table, his broomstick in splinters around him, and he stood over him, wand hand shaking, fluid leaking from his treacherous nose, dizzy as Remus rolled onto his back and said, very clearly, ‘Fuck.’

 

‘What the fuck just happened?’ Sirius yelled at him. ‘You just flew your fucking broomstick through our fucking window in the middle of fucking London!’

 

Remus shut his eyes just as the neighbours downstairs started banging on their ceiling. After a few seconds he opened his eyes again and yelled, ‘Christ, can’t we have a bloody domestic in peace?’ The banging stopped, though Sirius suspected that it was only so their neighbours could ring up the police.

 

‘My broom,’ Remus said, still speaking in that clipped, precise tone, ‘just completely iced up. I couldn’t control it. I had hoped to land on the roof but…’

 

‘Jesus Christ,’ Sirius snapped. He sat back down on the couch before he passed out from the overwhelming dizziness in his head and grabbed for a tissue. ‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ he added.

 

‘No help?’ Remus asked, from the depths of the table. ‘I think I just broke every bone in my body.’

 

‘I’ll pass out if I stand up,’ Sirius snapped. ‘I’ve got a terrible cold.’

 

‘Urgh,’ Remus said, and he sat up. ‘Well I’ve had a shit day too, no need to be so twitchy.’

 

Sirius snarled at him and Remus snarled back and then they slammed lots of doors and Sirius almost embedded a splinter of Remus’s broom in his head trying to clean it up and there was more snarling, interspersed with Sirius blowing his nose and Remus hobbling around searching for something to wrap his severely sprained ankle. Eventually Sirius stalked off to the bath and then felt dizzy again, sank down under the hot water, and woke up to Remus’s hand on his shoulder.

 

‘What the fuck?’ he demanded, spluttering, but Remus handed him a cup of tea and said gently, ‘You fell asleep. I was worried you’d drowned.’

 

Sirius sighed and scrubbed a hand across his face. ‘Sorry for not being sympathetic about the broom,’ he muttered.

 

‘I’m sorry for not being more careful,’ Remus replied. He sat down on the bathroom floor, leaning his back against the base of the sink. Sirius saw that he had his own cup of tea. ‘How’s the bath?’

 

‘Warm,’ Sirius said truthfully. ‘I’ll give it to you in a minute.’

 

‘It’s ok,’ Remus said. ‘I did about sixty warming charms underneath my comforter before I came in here. Did you know that hair will just snap if it’s frozen?’

 

‘And broomsticks, apparently,’ Sirius said.

 

‘And broomsticks,’ Remus agreed. He tiled his head back and took a long drink. ‘So tell me about your miserable day.’

 

‘Ugh,’ Sirius said. ‘Where to begin, really. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep, of course, because I was on patrol the last two nights as well.’

 

‘Of course,’ Remus said.

 

‘Which you understand, because you had done the same thing.’

 

Remus nodded and said, ‘But at least I don’t have as many rigid time commitments as you do.’

 

‘Point academia,’ Sirius said. ‘Plus I’ve got this bloody cold. And then I had a long day at work learning about this new find that’s come into the conservation lab, as well as brushing up on the lecture I’m giving to some students tomorrow.’

 

Remus frowned in sympathy, which made Sirius feel warmer inside, at least. ‘Then I went to see this warehouse that the Order is so convinced is full of Death Eaters up to no good – ‘

 

‘The one by East India Quay?’

 

‘That’s the one.’

 

‘I’m scheduled to go there for patrol next week,’ Remus said.

 

‘Well let me draw you up a map of where to sit for maximum getting sleeted on,’ Sirius grumbled, though he was finding it extremely hard to remain in a bad mood just now, with the bath, and the tea, and the Moony sympathy.

 

‘So how was the patrol? Aside from cold and wet.’

 

‘I’ll be honest, I think there’s something there too, but I’ll be buggered if I can figure out what the hell it is,’ Sirius said. ‘I spent the entire time with a feeling of deep foreboding that I couldn’t match up to conditions on the ground at all. The whole place seems completely deserted. I can’t even find evidence of former magic there, let alone present activity.’

 

Remus frowned. ‘But you have a bad feeling about it.’

 

‘Exactly.’ Sirius flopped backwards to avoid dripping snot out of his nose into the water. ‘Cad you had me a dissue?’

 

Remus grinned and gave him some loo roll. ‘You certainly sound pathetic.’

 

‘So what’s your story?’ Sirius asked. ‘Just out joyriding on your broom?’

 

Remus sighed and shook his head. ‘Unfortunately not – and based on that little crash, I don’t know if I’ll be joyriding on it any time soon.’

 

‘Where were you coming from?’

 

‘Milton Keynes, if you can believe it. Someone got a tip that there’s a werewolf group there that might be converted over to work with us.’

 

‘In _Milton Keynes_?’

 

‘Apparently the joke – repeated to me by multiple members of said group for maximum hilarity – is that so few people there care about anything because of their depressing surroundings that they don’t even notice some werewolves amongst them.’

 

Sirius snorted and his ear/nose/throat system immediately regretted it. ‘Sounds like fun. What did they have to say?’

 

Remus was silent for a minute, and Sirius turned to look at him, despite the damage that swivelling his head did to his inner ear. Remus was biting his lip and frowning. Sirius had a sudden image of the people in the barn. ‘Were they ok?’ he asked.

 

‘Who?’

 

‘The werewolf group.’

 

Remus cocked his head and said, ‘As well as could be, I suppose. Few of them are educated or have access to good health care. They’ve got a sympathetic GP in the Muggle NHS who will look at injuries no questions asked, but of course magical methods for healing wounds caused by the werewolf transformation are much more effective than taking some codeine and putting on a cast. And of course lots of them can’t hold down normal jobs, and so they’re all quite poor, but they pool their resources and their leader, this woman named Sam, does her best to make sure that they have a roof over their heads, a safe place to go at the full moon, and a reasonable quality of life.’ Remus paused, saw the appalled look on Sirius’s face, and said, ‘There but for the grace of friends and family go I, you know.’

 

Sirius felt terrible, and it wasn’t just the cold. The thought of Remus in conditions like that didn’t even bear contemplating. ‘I wish there was some kind of charity or something,’ he said helplessly.

 

‘Until lycanthropy is recognised as a legitimate disease instead of as a curse, and often one that’s deserved, it’s not going to change,’ Remus said.  

 

For the rest of the week, Sirius kept hearing Remus’s matter-of-fact voice explaining that a group – a group he belonged to – with a terrible disease that was _in no way anyone’s fault_ was forced into marginalisation by wizarding society. He couldn’t understand how Remus could fight for that society – or how he could himself, or any of their friends or Remus’s parents, for that matter – when its corruption and immorality was so obvious.

 

On Monday afternoon, he came home from the Museum through light snow to find Remus and James bundling themselves tightly in warm clothes and talking about protective spells.

 

‘So I think,’ James was saying, ‘that we could modify a simple repelling spell to add on the heating element but keep it from glowing too brightly by repelling the light…’

 

‘But the light is part of the heat,’ Remus countered. ‘Padfoot, have you seen my scarf?’

 

Sirius pulled it out from behind the door of his bedroom – he’d stolen it the night before for his own patrol – and said, ‘If you get that warming spell working, you’d better let me know.’

 

‘We’re off to your famous East End warehouse,’ Remus said.

 

‘I feel sorry for you then,’ Sirius said. ‘Be prepared to die of boredom before any Death Eaters even get near you.’

 

James went to the toilet and Remus and Sirius met in the kitchen. ‘I’ll leave dinner in the fridge for you,’ Sirius said, digging around for a box of pasta.

 

‘Thanks,’ Remus said, smiling big. ‘I took care of the gas bill.’

 

‘Hey, Moony,’ Sirius said, gnawing at his lip. ‘Can I ask you a quick question?’

 

‘Of course,’ Remus said. ‘What is it, Padfoot?’

 

‘How can you keep fighting for the Order when you know that most of wizarding society that it’s fighting to protect is against people like you?’

 

Remus blinked and then quirked his lips up. ‘Has that been weighing on you?’

 

‘A bit, yeah,’ Sirius admitted. ‘You don’t have to answer right now.’

 

‘I can,’ Remus said. ‘The answer’s simple. First, there’s always a chance to improve this society – to fight for rights for marginalised groups. And second – well, of course, everyone I love is in it.’

 

Before Sirius could respond, James had returned and then they were off. Sirius cooked dinner and ate it slowly, reading a book at the repaired coffee table. At some point he must have fallen asleep, his food mostly eaten and the book cracked open across his lap, because when the front door banged open he came out of sleep and into wakefulness with his wand drawn. It was only Remus coming home, shivering and ready to eat dinner. Sirius sat and talked with him as he ate, and then they said their goodnights and Sirius lay in bed. Despite the cold, the darkness, and the war, he couldn’t help but feel warm. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some cricket here. Don't worry about knowing the rules; Sirius doesn't know them either. This part of the story is actually the core -- it's the first thing I wrote, and the rest of the story expanded around it. Also, the trek through Watford was inspired by a journey I made alone to a friend's birthday party -- if only I'd had a companion to make it better.

Slowly, winter abated into cold spring rains and the occasional brilliant burst of a sunny day. Order work slowly shifted from being onerous to being actively dangerous, although their efforts were mostly focused on intelligence gathering. Nothing more came of the East End warehouse and efforts shifted to other places. The threat of war – all out, dangerous war – hung over the wizarding world like the Sword of Damocles, but thus far it remained suspended. Sirius sometimes caught himself lapsing into a quiet kind of happiness, and then something would happen – a close call for Remus or James or Peter, a headline in the Prophet about violence elsewhere – and he’d find himself flailing, an almost physical sensation that made his fingertips tingle. Then the contentment would slowly creep back in, this incredibly humble domestic happiness at the life he was slowly building for himself, and the cycle would repeat.

 

One Friday in early May, Sirius was late leaving work; he was enjoying himself so much that he had completely lost track of time. He was sitting with Graham in the small floor space between their desks, trying to design pharaoh mask shapes on thick cardboard. He was concentrating so hard on getting the shape of King Tut’s goatee right that he didn’t notice that someone else had entered the room until Graham turned the radio off and said, ‘Can we help you?’

 

‘I’m looking for Sirius,’ he heard Remus say. He twisted around and there was the man himself, holding a brolly and with his hair damp and curling at his temples. His lips were curved up in a little smile. ‘Hiya,’ Remus said. ‘Did you forget that we were supposed to meet?’

 

‘Oh, hell,’ Sirius said. ‘Is it six already?’

 

‘Is it?’ Graham asked, sounding shocked. ‘This has taken forever!’

 

Remus bent down to look at their masks, still smiling. ‘They look great,’ he said. ‘Are the students going to cut them out?’

 

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Sirius. He held out his original version to Remus, who took it and hooked the elastic bands over his ears.

 

‘Do I look like a scary mummy?’ Remus asked, his voice muffled by the card.

 

‘You’d be scarier if I’d gotten the goatee straight,’ Sirius said, frowning. Then he realised that Graham was watching them and felt suddenly, strangely exposed. ‘Graham, this is Remus,’ he said, and paused, not sure how to describe what exactly Remus was.

 

‘I’m his flatmate,’ Remus said, pushing the mask onto his forehead and extending a hand. ‘And you must be Sirius’s boss?’

 

‘Oh, no need to be so formal,’ said Graham. ‘I think of us more as partners in crime.’ He shook Remus’s hand with a big smile. ‘What are you lads up to this evening?’

 

‘We’re meeting some friends,’ Remus said. ‘Sirius was supposed to meet me outside but when I didn’t see him, I decided to come find him.’

 

‘Sorry about that,’ Sirius said belatedly. ‘Just got caught up…’

 

‘Oh, no worries,’ Remus said with his usual good cheer. ‘Now I can see what your office looks like!’

 

Sirius gave Remus the tour. ‘This is my desk, and this is Graham’s desk, and this is the stapler, which we use for putting paper together.’

 

Graham grinned. ‘Don’t forget the scissors! We use those for taking paper apart!’

 

‘Ah,’ Remus said, very solemn, ‘you must introduce us, Sirius.’

 

‘Terrible oversight on my part,’ Sirius said, handing Remus a box of child-safety scissors with brightly coloured handles.

 

Remus perched on Sirius’s desk and helped Graham cut out the last few masks while Sirius puttered around the office gathering up scraps or paper, shaping them into perfect spheres (give or take), and throwing them in the general direction of the rubbish bin. Then Remus helped Sirius gather them up and actually deposit them into the rubbish bin.

 

As they prepared to leave, Graham said, ‘What are you two doing tomorrow afternoon?’

 

Sirius and Remus looked at each other. Remus shook his head. ‘Nothing, as far as I know,’ Sirius said. ‘Why?’

 

Graham suddenly looked sly. ‘Fancy a game of cricket?’ he asked. ‘We’ve got a team that practice in Regent’s Park. We lost some players this summer, so it would be great if you wanted to join in.’

 

Remus’s face lit up. ‘I think we’d enjoy that,’ he said, giving Sirius an encouraging look.

 

‘I don’t have a lot of experience,’ Sirius said, giving Remus a look back that meant, _any_.

 

‘That’s ok,’ Remus and Graham said at the same time.

 

‘We can teach you,’ Graham clarified.

 

‘We can go over early and get some practice in!’ Remus said.

 

Sirius gave Remus a mystified look. ‘Didn’t you grow up in Wales? Do Welsh people even play cricket?’

 

‘You know my dad is English,’ Remus said. ‘We used to play cricket in the front garden a lot.’ Sirius raised his eyebrows. ‘During the rugby halftime, of course,’ Remus said.

 

‘I figured that was when you shagged the sheep,’ Sirius said.

 

‘Now, now,’ Graham said. ‘He’s a cricketer and I won’t hear a word against him.’ He was beaming from ear to ear. ‘Meet me near the main zoo entrance for two o’clock and we’ll walk over to the pitch.’

 

 

The brief window of calm that had been winter and spring shattered, and suddenly the war seemed to escalate more every day. The Floo Network closed down for an indefinite period in mid-June, with the Ministry all but declaring that they couldn’t protect any form of wizarding transportation except one-time-use Portkeys. There were random killings and more rumours of high ranking officials being under the Imperius Curse. Beyond the wizarding world, Brixton had erupted in riots and Camden seemed not far behind.

 

For Sirius and Remus, whose lives were entangled with all of these things, the Regent’s Park Cricket League came into their lives at the exact right moment. It was a relief to go somewhere where the magical world seemed far removed, where England was reduced to a sunny (or more often cloudy and rainy) circle of grass and they could sweat and run and not think about anything but the intricate rules of the game. They called their club by its acronym like it was a fifth marauder: the RPCL. They bored Peter and Emmeline silly one evening by reliving the thrill of the past Sunday’s 40/40 match, which had in fact contained exactly one thrill, when Remus had hit a fast-travelling ball for six and it had gone straight into the pond on the west of the pitch and killed a swan.

 

Neither of them mentioned it, but Sirius was sure that they both knew that this was their escape, their own private posh summer with its cricket whites and gin and tonics in front of the Regent’s Park club. Sirius had no idea how to play, did not seem in danger of picking it up, and was utterly miserable at every aspect of the game except showing the occasional skill in fielding (‘Of course you’re good at fetching a ball,’ Remus snickered) but when he and Remus were out on the field together, he was certain that they were having the time of their lives.  

 

And thus, to Sirius, it seemed somehow fitting in retrospect that the most important thing to happen to him that summer – the most important thing to happen to him _ever,_ probably, he would reflect later – occurred as a result of cricket. Well, not _as a result_ , per se, he would later think, but happened with cricket as setting – the landscape-painting details that swirled around him as he hurtled face first into fate.

 

They had one away game, against a club all the way out in Watford. The workings of the team schedule and the rota of away locations and teams played was utterly baffling to Sirius, even though he spent a portion of every work day sitting in an office with their schedule on the wall. Remus, of course, knew all about it long before Sirius did. One night, after they had cooked a mushroom risotto for dinner and were so full that they had decided to lie down on the floor as a digestion aid, Remus brought it up.

 

‘Do you know when the Watford game is?’ he asked. They were lying side by side, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling. _London Calling_ was playing softly on the record player and Sirius was humming along to ‘Lost in the Supermarket’.

 

‘What Watford game?’

 

‘It’s our cricket league away game,’ Remus said.

 

Sirius frowned. ‘I thought that away games were when we went to a different pitch in the park.’

 

Remus laughed, then moaned. ‘No laughing,’ he said strictly. ‘My stomach might explode.’

 

‘I wasn’t joking? Away denotes further away from the pavilion?’

 

‘Honestly,’ Remus said, rolling onto his side, propping his head up on one arm, and looking down at Sirius. ‘Don’t you pay attention to the schedule?’

 

Sirius offered a rhetorical question from what he considered his unassailable position, which at the moment was lying prone on the floor. ‘You think I can pay attention to the schedule in between trying to remember where mid-off-field-silly-double-half-leg is? I don’t think so. So what’s the Watford game?’

 

‘Our team plays an away game every year,’ Remus said patiently. ‘This year, it’s with some team in Watford. Some place called King George’s field or something like that. And as it’s mid-July, I’m guessing that it’s coming up soon.’

 

The game turned out to be that weekend. Graham was extremely apologetic about the location and the fact that he couldn’t give them a lift in his car; he had to carry all the equipment for the team. He did, however, promise them a surprise when they got to the pitch.

 

With the Floo Network down and Apparition still risky business, they opted to take the tube. Sirius had initially suggested that Remus ride pillion on his motorcycle whilst clutching all of their gear, but the look on Remus’s face had been enough to quash that. Their team was made up of all Muggles except for them, but no one was coming from Camden, so they were on their own to navigate their way. Remus bought them tickets and Sirius caught himself watching him with a strangely warm feeling. He’d been catching himself doing that more and more often lately – just watching Remus do some mundane, usually Muggle, task and feeling a kind of quiet glow.

 

Sirius was experiencing other kinds of warm feelings that day too. It was the hottest day of the summer thus far. Descending down the escalators into the underground was a lot like descending into Hades, if Hades was humid and plastered in adverts for West End shows. Remus was humming ‘London’s Burning’ under his breath before they had even made it onto the platform. The train arrived with a great whoosh of hot air, and they stepped inside.

 

‘Hello Dante,’ Sirius muttered, ‘Didn’t expect to see you all the way down in this hell circle,’ and Remus made a noise somewhere between a gasp and giggle.

 

‘Circle Line,’ he said.

 

As the train moved away from London, it got emptier, but the temperature seemed to increase. The train broke ground and emerged into full sunlight; Sirius shifted his legs and found that they were unpleasantly stuck to the fabric of his borrowed cricket whites. He moved them and they stuck even more unpleasantly to the seat, his sweat leaking through the fabric and onto the seats. Beside him, Remus mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief. They each had a bottle of water meant to last for the duration of the game; it was gone by the time they exited the sweltering Bakerloo line to switch to the Piccadilly. Remus’s shirt was clinging to his chest, showing the outline of his shoulder muscles. Sirius watched them move in front of him as they dragged themselves and their kit up the stairs to the train to Watford. When they arrived on the platform, they were greeted by a handwritten sign that simply said, ‘Delayed’.

 

Remus found a station manager, who informed them that due to something called a ‘signal failure’, trains on the Piccadilly line were not running from Watford to Aldgate. ‘So, most of the line, then?’ Remus asked, and the manager nodded cheerfully.

 

‘It’s all down,’ he said. ‘Where are you trying to get to?’

 

Remus told him and he laughed. ‘Not a chance. Maybe later this afternoon.’

 

‘We’re going to be late to play our game,’ Remus said, indicating their kit. ‘Any other ways we can get there?’

 

They entered an extended period of negotiations. Sirius watched Remus throughout, taking note of how he steered the conversation, kept the station manager returning to their problem, and did it all with a smile and a gentle tone. His shirt was really stuck to his body; Sirius could see the faint outline of his clearly present pectoral muscles and some stray blonde hairs that were escaping through the undone collar. Sirius wondered idly if Remus had those muscles from being a wolf.

 

‘Ok, thank you sir,’ Remus said, beaming at the man. He turned to Sirius. ‘We can get there if we take the Bakerloo all the way up to Watford High Street and then walk for a bit,’ he said, and Sirius obediently followed Remus down the stairs. He was feeling dazed and strange, and he couldn’t stop watching the way Remus walked, the way Remus queued for entry onto the train, the way that Remus stopped just inside the door to adjust the window on the car, smile at an old lady, and read the map. Sirius was overcome with a sudden desire to memorise all of Remus’s actions; they had a strange magnetism, like watching a bee in a rose bush; Sirius thought he could do it for hours.

 

God it was hot on the bloody train.  

 

‘Sit down,’ Remus suggested, and Sirius saw that he had sat down and was patting the seat beside him. When he did sit, Remus patted his head and said, ‘Good dog,’ but he said it so fondly, so gently, that it made Sirius want to roll onto his belly and wag his tail.

 

‘I think I need some water,’ he announced.

 

Remus gave him a worried look and said, ‘We’ll get some at the station.’

 

When they got there, the station shop was shut. Remus left Sirius sitting outside after minimal protest and marched off down Watford High Street in search of liquids. Sirius sat on the kerb and watched Remus’s back recede down the street, wondering if he was suffering from heat stroke. Remus returned after a few minutes with two pint glasses of water that almost certainly had been pilfered from a nearby pub.

 

‘Poor Padfoot,’ he said. He plunked down beside Sirius and insisted on holding his glass for him.

 

‘I’m not an invalid,’ Sirius said, trying to sound cross but coming off as whingey.

 

‘You’re doing a good impression of it,’ Remus said. He fussed over Sirius as he drank the water, putting a hand to his forehead and feeling his pulse. ‘I think you have Victorian wasting disease. It’s common among aristocrats with ivory skin.’

 

‘Fuck off,’ Sirius said. ‘And thank you for the water.’

 

Remus grinned. ‘Are you feeling better?’ he asked. ‘You seem to have regained some of your _je ne sais quoi_ , or whatever the saying is. We’ve got a bit of a walk, and then we’ll be outside for the duration of the game…’

 

‘I’m fine,’ Sirius said, though he wasn’t sure he was. Remus’s hands felt cool and wonderful but his heart was feeling all fluttery inside of his chest. He decided that he was nervous for the game. Remus was set to make his bowling debut in the match and Sirius wanted him to do well. He knew that Remus had been practising for weeks. ‘Come on,’ Sirius said, standing. ‘We’ve got to get going!’

 

They walked for what felt like hours. Remus had gotten a map from somewhere that showed roughly where they were going and according to it they had two miles to walk. After twenty minutes, Sirius could have sworn that it had said two hundred. They went from a brisk walk to a stately pace to a grim death march, and still they were only halfway there. Remus kept consulting the map and Sirius kept complaining about Remus’s inability to read maps. Remus gave Sirius the map and he couldn’t even find the street corner they were standing on. After thirty minutes they had lapsed into a sulky silence occasionally punctuated with remarks on the weather.

 

‘It must be thirty degrees out here.’

 

‘Maybe even more. Thirty-three or thirty-five.’

 

‘Wouldn’t surprise me. And not a bloody cloud in the sky.’

 

‘I’d kill for some rain.’

 

‘Unnatural weather, certainly. And summer almost over, too!’

 

‘I think it must be nearer forty out here. Just really, just dreadfully, incredibly hot.’

 

At that point they passed a newsstand whose wares proclaimed, ‘London hotter than Barcelona! Highs in the mid-twenties!’ Sirius mopped his forehead.

 

‘Is my hair flopping?’ he asked worriedly.

 

‘What are you, Samson?’ Remus demanded, but there wasn’t much vigour in it.

 

‘My hair is my only defence.’

 

‘How does that work?’

 

‘I throw the other team off with my stunning good looks.’

 

‘I’ll try not to look directly at you when bowling,’ Remus grumbled.

 

‘I hope not!’ Sirius said. ‘I want you to do well. This is a declaration game, right? So the faster you take wickets, the sooner we can get to a pub.’

 

‘Then try to catch the bloody ball first time around,’ Remus growled, ‘instead of chasing it to the boundary.’ There was a momentary silence, and when Remus spoke again his voice was softer. ‘Though I have to say, I’m impressed that you know the term “declaration game”.’

 

By the time they reached the cricket grounds Sirius was certain he’d lost fifty percent of his body weight in sweat dripped out onto the pavement. They met Graham at the entrance to the park.

 

‘Oh thank god,’ Graham said. ‘I thought I’d lost you two. We’re almost ready to start.’

 

‘Tube was broken,’ Sirius managed to gasp.

 

‘Well have some water,’ Graham said, and he led them to the pavilion. There, with an air of great ceremony, he brought out a paper-wrapped package. ‘Surprise!’

 

Sirius took it and tore back the paper. Inside were two new, white cricket jumpers with RPCL embroidered on the breast. Sirius had never wanted to wear a jumper less in his life, but he was touched all the same. ‘Thank you, Graham!’ he said, and he meant it. He’d never been on a team before; he’d been so crap at Quidditch that Captain James had cut him almost before tryouts had started and he’d been kicked out of the Gobstones club on the first day for giving a Slytherin a black eye. Beside him, Remus was beaming.

 

‘These are just wonderful,’ Remus said. ‘Thank you!’

 

‘You two really saved the team,’ Graham said, looking a bit embarrassed. ‘We wouldn’t have had enough players without you. And you’ve been wonderful!’ He nodded at Remus. ‘Are you ready to bowl today?’

 

‘I’ve been practicing all morning,’ Remus said, and Sirius thought, _aha, that’s why you weren’t at breakfast_. He’d had to eat both of the portions of sausage he’d prepared after waiting nearly an hour for Remus to get up before checking his room and discovering that he’d been gone since Sirius himself had gotten out of bed. Luckily it was a sword that Sirius had been more than ready to fall upon, although he had missed Remus’s input on the crossword.

 

‘Wonderful,’ Graham said. They all paused to generate some awkward feelings about the emotions, including enthusiasm, that they had been expressing to each other,  and then Graham said, ‘Well I have a coin toss to win…’ and left the pavilion to engage in the age-old tradition of channelling awkward feelings into cricket.

 

Sirius found that he was still having trouble with his own emotions. He felt restless and his stomach was clenched, as it had been all day. They were alone in the clubhouse. He turned in his seat to look at Remus and said, ‘Moony, how are you feeling about bowling?’

 

‘Good,’ Remus said.

 

‘Well, I think I’m nervous for you,’ Sirius said. ‘Not that I think you’ll do badly but…’

 

Remus smiled and Sirius felt that _something_ again, this time in the region of his stomach. ‘I appreciate it,’ Remus said lightly. He reached out, just for a second, and touched the back of Sirius’s hand. ‘If I know you’re worrying, then I won’t have to do it myself and I can just concentrate on bowling.’ Remus stood up. ‘Come warm up with me.’

 

They hadn’t won the coin toss. Since they usually played forty overs, Sirius rarely got a chance to bat, but in a declaration match he had to go in as the eleventh man. Remus was tenth, and the game was going fairly well when the ninth man was caught out and Sirius had to put on the heavy, sweat-smelling helmet and shuffle out to the wicket. Remus met him in the middle.

 

‘The pitch is pretty soft,’ Remus said, ‘and don’t be fooled by the bowler, he’s faster than he looks.’

 

Sirius nodded. The helmet was really quite heavy. He squeezed his fists on the bat handle – it was one of Remus’s old bats, from when he’d been a teenager, playing out in the front garden with his dad – and tried to channel some ancient cricket knowledge from the worn rubber grip. ‘So what do you mean that the pitch is soft?’ he asked.

 

Remus smiled; Sirius could see his teeth through the black bars of his helmet. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘Just try to hit the ball down, so you don’t get caught out.’

 

‘What about running?’ Sirius lowered his voice. ‘I’m kind of scared of being run out.’

 

Remus’s smile was warm, warmer than the sloping sun that was casting shadows across the field. ‘If we need to run, I’ll tell you when.’

 

‘What about stopping running?’

 

‘I’ll tell you that too.’

 

Sirius’s stomach turned over and he thought of something else. ‘Hey Moony?’

 

‘Yeah?’

 

‘Are we winning?’

 

‘Not yet,’ Remus said. ‘But I’ve got great confidence in this partnership.’ He held out his gloved hand in a fist and Sirius bumped it. They retreated to their separate ends of the wicket and Sirius prepared to run.

 

In the end, he was caught out, but not until after he’d scored his first multiple runs in a cricket match. Once the other team had marked him out as an easy target, they’d moved their fielders into a tight circle and he’d thwacked the heavy ball over their heads, where it had rolled out through the short grass for a four. Remus celebrated Sirius’s four like they’d won the game and when they came into the pavilion for tea everyone congratulated him. They gulped down poorly mixed squash and tuna mayonnaise sandwiches on thick homemade bread while the other team’s wives moved quietly amongst them, removing plates and offering strawberries. Then they trotted out onto the field to begin the second innings.

 

Sirius rapidly lost track of the overs, and the scoreboard was being only sporadically updated. Remus came in to bowl towards the end of the game, when the RPCL had already taken eight wickets, and for some unknown reason Remus wanted Sirius at mid-off. It was one of the more advanced fielding positions, and really should have gone to someone with skill – any skill – but Remus insisted. Sirius’s job consisted mainly of fielding the ball from his own teammates and preparing it, with an extra helping of spit, to be ready for the bowler. He took great pleasure in spitting into his hand, rubbing it over the rough-smooth surface of the ball, and rubbing it vigorously on his shirt. He felt needed, wanted. It occurred to him belatedly that Remus was trying to make him feel this way, trying to make him feel integral to the process of cricket as she is played and more specifically to the process of Remus himself bowling, but the thought didn’t make Sirius feel patronised; he doubled his efforts, made sure the ball was perfect in every way before he tossed it gently to Remus.

 

It was during Remus’s third over as a bowler – when the other team was close to catching up, but with no batters remaining – that Sirius noticed it. Later, if he tried to pinpoint the exact moment when he felt everything shift, when his thoughts suddenly caught up with his emotions, he would think of this. It was the fourth bowl of the over. Sirius had previously been watching the batters, but Graham had jogged over after the last ball to remind him to always follow the bowler and to move with the bowler as he travelled towards the wicket. It wasn’t that Sirius hadn’t wanted to watch Remus, it was just that he’d thought he was doing the right thing by _not_ watching him. Now, with three bowls remaining in the over, Sirius turned his attention to Remus and focused on him. The ball left Sirius’s hand and travelled in a gentle arc straight into Remus’s own outstretched hand. Remus drew it into his body, and, turning to walk away from the wicket, ran it once down his shirt. He paced his steps out into the field.

 

Sirius watched him as he paced. He could see Remus counting his paces aloud, see his lips moving, although he couldn’t hear his voice. Probably because Sirius had only the vaguest idea of how bowling worked, or what bowling was like, he focused more on Remus and what it was that Remus was doing and going through as he stopped at the end of his pacing, paused, and then turned to start his run up. What struck Sirius most, watching Remus as he stopped pacing and made that turn, was how very alone he had looked, mouthing words to himself and squinting down the pitch. Sirius was overcome by the strongest desire he’d ever felt in his life: he wanted to walk out to Remus and take his hand, to end that solitary march and make it for two.

 

‘This is the one,’ yelled the inveterate trash talker on the RPCL, yanking Sirius’s thoughts back to the game. ‘This one’s going to hit the stumps!’

 

Remus started his run up. Sirius knew that Remus did something called ‘spin bowling’ which meant that the ball spun, but then he’d always thought that the ball would spin if it was obeying the laws of physics (something he liked to think he knew quite a bit about, having written an essay of twelve inches for third year Muggle Studies about how magic couldn’t technically violate them), so he wasn’t sure how what Remus did was any different from the other bowlers. Remus windmilled his arm around – Sirius winced, as he did every time he watched Remus bowl, certain that this was the time it would snap out of its socket – and the ball flew like it had come from a slingshot. Sirius froze in place watching Remus, who was watching the trajectory of the ball, until –

 

‘Sirius!’ Remus screamed. Sirius brought his hands up over his head in a reflexive gesture of protection and the ball slammed into them.

 

It hurt. A lot. Sirius realised almost too late that he needed to hold onto it. He bobbled it and made a dive. He caught it in an outstretched palm. He became vaguely aware that people were cheering. One of the batsmen was walking away, past Sirius, head down. Then Remus was beside him, pulling him to his feet.

 

‘You made the catch!’ Remus yelled, grabbing Sirius’s shoulders and jumping up and down.

 

‘I did,’ Sirius said, dazed. He felt unsteady on his feet again and wondered if he needed more water. Remus was making him dizzy.

 

‘You caught it!’ Graham was there too, and then his other teammates, all of them crowding in and cheering. Sirius thought he might pass out, so he focused on Remus, who _thank god_ had stopped jumping.

 

‘Hero of the match!’ Remus proclaimed. He put his arm around Sirius’s shoulders and led him back to the pavilion, shaking the hands of the defeated team on the way.

 

As they gathered up their bags, Sirius heard the story of what had happened. After the ball left Remus’s hand, it had spiked off the wicket. The batsman, thinking he had a read on it, took an almighty swing. The ball danced away, taking an unexpected jog, and the bat struck it on an edge, sending it rocketing into the sky so that it could be caught by Sirius. The entire team was in high spirits and Sirius faked that he was too, but he still felt strange and ill. He went into the gentlemen’s toilets in the pavilion and splashed cold water on his face. He scrubbed a wet hand through his hair and looked at himself in the mirror. He thought he looked different. He wondered if Remus had noticed.

 

Then Remus himself entered the toilets. ‘I was looking for you,’ he said to Sirius. ‘Are you ok?’

 

‘Yeah,’ Sirius said. ‘Just a little dehydrated.’

 

‘Hm,’ Remus said. He came and perched on the edge of the sink, watching Sirius. ‘I’ve got bad news, then.’

 

‘What’s that?’

 

‘The other team wants us to go to the pub.’

 

‘Liquid!’

 

‘Alcohol.’

 

‘Alcohol!’

 

Remus laughed and reached out to muss up Sirius’s hair. Sirius thought, that was a fond gesture. Remus is fond of me. He tried to remember if Remus ever did that James or Peter. He tried to remember if Remus had always done it to him. These questions troubled him all the way to the pub. A pitcher of ale later, they were still troubling him. He made another trip to the toilet. These toilets were filthy, but he stopped in front of the mirror and looked at himself again. He didn’t look any different, but he certainly felt different. He went back into the main room and saw Remus from a distance. He was sitting with their teammates, listening to some story, his cheeks flushed and his hair curling wildly around his head. Sirius thought, _Oh Remus, you are too beautiful_. The thought stopped him in his tracks, it really did, because he had absolutely no idea where it had come from. Then he was just stopped in the hallway to the toilets in a dingy pub in Watford, watching the light that had managed to creep through the dark wood blinds catch in Remus’s hair and noticing how those motes of light seemed to illuminate the entire room. He stood there for nearly a full minute, captivated by Remus: the way he leaned back his head when he laughed, the way he put his palm over his glass, the way he looked up to listen to someone talk. Every tiny gesture was fascinating.

 

‘Ah, the man of the match,’ he heard Graham say, and he managed to tear his attention away from Remus and focus on Graham. The other man was smiling at him, a strange, gentle smile. ‘And your man,’ he said, quietly but kindly, ‘the other man of the match. He’s really a wonderful chap, Sirius.’

 

Sirius opened his mouth to say, ‘It’s not like that,’ but Graham shook his head. ‘I mean it, Sirius. You’re the best co-worker I’ve ever had, and beyond that, I’m not one to judge. I’m happy for you two. You should come over to dinner sometime. My wife would love to meet you both.’ Then he put his hand on Sirius’s shoulder for a second before he left him standing alone in the hallway. Sirius realised a moment later that Remus was looking at him, beckoning him over. Remus had saved his seat and gotten him a new pint. Sirius sat beside him and their knees pressed together under the cramped table felt like a rope tethering him to the earth. He held the secret inside of him that Graham thought that he and Remus belonged together. It fel like a warm blue flame cupped between cold hands.

 

By closing time, Remus was thoroughly leathered; Sirius, only slightly better, had achieved a state of non-sobriety that had served only to heighten his emotions. He felt on the verge of what would surely be life-endingly embarrassing tears as someone called them a taxi to take them to the tube station. There, they waited on the darkened platform, Remus leaning into Sirius. He was shivering, so Sirius pulled out his new cricket jumper.

 

‘Wear this,’ he said.

 

‘Ok,’ Remus said obediently. He held his arms straight up from his head and looked at Sirius expectantly. Sirius sighed, the picture of long-suffering, his heart jumping around in his chest like a frog in a pot. He pulled the jumper over Remus’s head and smoothed out his wildly curling hair. Remus looked beyond gorgeous wearing it. The train arrived and they took their seats. Within moments, Remus was asleep, his head against Sirius’s shoulder and his mouth wide open in what should have been an incredibly unattractive, but was actually an incredibly endearing, pose.

 The train rocked its way back to London, its gentle motion apparently drunk Remus’s ideal lullaby. To Sirius, every shift of the carriage pulled Remus either closer or further from him. By the time they arrived at Oxford Circus to make their change, Sirius was in a state of near hysteria. He woke Remus up, and they walked together, Remus weaving slightly, across the station and to their next line. The next train was packed – people leaving some sort of event – and they stood on it, Remus leaning hard against Sirius. Sirius didn’t know what to do with himself and tried to simultaneously support Remus and not touch him with any part of his body.

 

 

‘Padfoot,’ Remus mumbled in the vicinity of his ear. ‘I think I made a terrible mistake.’

 

‘What?’ Sirius asked, not sure if he’d heard correctly; the tube train was squealing on its tracks as it moved through the tunnel.

 

‘I said,’ Remus said, voice a bit louder, ‘I think I’ve made a terrible mistake!’

 

‘What’s that?’ Sirius asked. He tried to shift slightly so that Remus wasn’t putting all of his weight onto Sirius’s upper arm – which was connected at a ninety-degree angle to his lower arm, which was connected to his hand, which was clinging desperately to the bar above his head trying to support both of them. The shift didn’t work and Remus slumped further.

 

‘I got drunk,’ Remus said, his voice full of childlike wonder. ‘I don’t remember that happening.’

 

‘You were the hero of the game,’ Sirius said. His other arm was also aching from holding both of their bags of kit. ‘Do you remember that?’

 

‘It’s called a fucking match,’ Remus slurred, but Sirius swore there was affection under there. ‘S’not a game. ‘S’more important than a game. And you were. The hero, I mean.’ He put a hand on Sirius’s chest and then put his forehead directly onto Sirius’s already overtaxed upper arm just as the train lurched to a stop. Sirius managed to get Remus off that train and onto the escalators to their connection with the Northern Line. He felt like they’d had a tour of the entire Underground and the sweaty bodies of everyone riding it. Their final train was also crowded, and as a group of rowdy punks got on board, Sirius instinctively pulled Remus close, wanting to protect him with the sweep of his arm, before realising what he was doing and trying to push him away again. Remus flopped back against the shut doors and gave him a reproachful look.  

 

Finally, they got off the train and made it back to the flat. Remus was a hopeless case, so Sirius deposited him on the couch and fetched a blanket from his own bed to cover him. Perhaps because of his own lingering intoxication, Sirius felt strongly that he shouldn’t go into Remus’s bedroom or even think about the concept that Remus had a bedroom. Acknowledging that Remus had a bedroom would in turn acknowledge how much Sirius wanted to be inside of that bedroom, which would then move on to thinking about what could happen inside that bedroom if Sirius was there and if Remus was also there and if… well, there were a lot of ifs. He tucked Remus in and left a glass of water on the end table beside him while he debated sleeping on the floor by the couch. The thought of leaving Remus’s side was so miserable that he brought out another blanket and a pillow and lay down to do just that. He wasn’t thinking clearly, but he was also at the stage of drunkenness where he could acknowledge that he wasn’t – as if his ability to reason was a director waiting in the wings on opening night, able to watch and agonise, but powerless to stop the movement of his actors across the stage.  

 

‘Padfoot?’ Remus mumbled from the couch.

 

Sirius froze in the process of patting down his little nest of blankets – he always liked to turn a bit around in bed before he could fall asleep – and felt immensely guilty. He ought to go away, to the other room, to someone else’s flat, or the street, or just somewhere, _away_ , and leave Remus be. But he couldn’t seem to bring himself to do it.

 

‘What’s wrong, Moony?’

 

‘What time is it?’

 

Sirius checked his watch. ’12:45.’

 

‘Can you set a wake up charm for 6:30? No! 6:00.’

 

Sirius sat up. ‘What?’

 

‘I have to catch a train tomorrow,’ Remus said. ‘I’m going to use some archives in Oxford.’

 

‘You’ll be gone all day?’ Sirius asked, suddenly breathless with anxiety. Tomorrow was a Monday. They were supposed to have lunch at the UCL Student Union on Mondays! Curry Mondays! How could they possibly miss Curry Mondays?  

 

‘A week,’ Remus said. ‘Well, a bit more. Until the Tuesday after this one.’ He twisted around Sirius’s blanket, settling. ‘Guess I forgot to tell you.’

 

Sirius wanted to scream: _yes you bloody well did, and how am I supposed to feel about that?_


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a LOT of fun writing this chapter -- by which I mean mildly torturing Sirius and James. Also I should warn that there is some explicit sex talk in this chapter and that the story only gets more explicit from here, so if that's not your jam, you probably shouldn't read on.

The alarm charm went off and Sirius jerked awake. He’d cast the charm to set off a siren across the room, which was the only way to motivate himself out of his floor bed long enough to silence it. Cursing, aching in every part of his body, he lurched to his feet, stumbled across the coffee table, and smashed a toe against the couch before he got to where he could silence it. Pain flared from his palm as he gripped his wand; he looked down at his hands and saw that both palms bore bruises marked by the purple impression of the seam of a cricket ball. He was wearing his cricket trousers and a white t-shirt and felt sticky with sweat. He was also, he noted with interest, still wearing his shoes.

 

‘Oooooooh.’

 

He turned around to see the blanket-covered lump on the couch shift slightly and his stomach flipped over like a sailboat in a hurricane. Never had a blanket-covered lump engendered so much feeling in him.

 

‘Wake up time, Moony,’ he said shakily. He crossed back to the couch and sat down on the coffee table. Remus was notoriously bad at mornings. ‘You said to wake you up.’

 

A wild nest of curling hair, followed by half of Remus’s face, appeared from beneath the blanket. ‘Padfoot,’ he croaked.

 

‘Good morning,’ Sirius said, doing his best to sound chirpy. ‘How do you feel?’

 

‘You know _exactly_ how I feel,’ Remus snarled.

 

‘Tea?’ Sirius asked.

 

‘Mmrrgh.’

 

Sirius had it made and poured into mugs before Remus made an appearance. He was also still fully dressed, including the jumper that Graham had given him and Sirius had put on him last night at the tube station. Sirius noted that he was not, however, wearing his shoes. Sirius remembered removing those for him when they got home. Then Sirius checked himself for signs of having been under some incredible delusion last night, but whatever it was, it seemed to have doubled in the darkness, because his mind told him that Remus, rumpled, bedraggled, deathly-hungover Remus, was the most amazing sight he’d ever seen. _Witching hour, indeed_ , he thought, followed by, _but not exactly a witch, is he?_ This thought induced a tightness of chest, and loss of breath, that made him reach out for the counter.

 

Remus held out his hands and Sirius handed him the tea. They stood in silence for a minute, Sirius trying to get his heartbeat under control and Remus staring blankly into his mug and breathing very carefully. Sirius had just about solved his problem when Remus said, ‘Did you sleep on the floor last night?’

 

‘Oh, ha, yeah,’ Sirius said. He couldn’t think of a single other thing to say and his heartbeat was ramping up again.

 

‘Why?’

 

‘Oh, you know,’ Sirius stalled with a plunge back into the depths of Marauder history. ‘Remember how you stayed with me after the Yule Ball in seventh year?’

 

‘You were vomiting firewhisky all over the girl’s toilets,’ Remus said. ‘Was I supposed to leave you?’

 

‘You didn’t have to let me fall asleep on your legs.’

 

‘I didn’t invite you to either,’ Remus replied. ‘You essentially passed out across them and I didn’t want to jostle you for fear you’d vomit firewhisky onto me.’

 

‘Well,’ Sirius said, after a respectful pause, ‘I wanted to return the favour.’

 

‘Good memory,’ Remus said, and he managed a little smile. ‘You also didn’t have to get up with me.’

 

‘I bloody well did,’ Sirius said. ‘You weren’t going to disable that wake up charm.’

 

Remus bit his lip. ‘Sorry about that.’

 

‘Why so early, anyway?’

 

‘Well, the library opens at nine…’

 

‘So you needed three hours to get ready?’

 

‘I have to take the train. So an hour to get packed and get out of here, two hours give or take to take the tube, get to Paddington, take the train, drop my things off where I’m staying, and then get to the library.’

 

‘Can’t you use the Floo network? I thought it was open at commuting times.’

 

‘New rules. Now you have to be a registered commuter,’ Remus said. What he’d left unsaid hung in the air: he didn’t want to register for anything with the Ministry. Sirius guessed that Remus must be one of the only unregistered werewolves in Britain, as one of the only ways to get around registering as a Dark Creature was to have gone to Hogwarts while a werewolf.

 

‘I could register, and you could use mine,’ Sirius said. ‘That would work, right?’

 

‘I don’t know, I assume they verify your wand…’ Remus shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s not a long train journey.’

 

‘But what about going to your parents’?’

 

‘Train,’ Remus said patiently. ‘It’s a bit longer, but it’s ok.’

 

Frustrated with the conversation, emotionally confused about everything, and hungover, Sirius turned away and rummaged through the cupboard for the eggs. ‘You go get packed and I’ll cook you breakfast.’

 

‘Sirius.’

 

‘What?’ Rummage, rummage. He’d seen them but couldn’t face looking at Remus just now.

 

‘Sirius.’

 

Sirius finally turned, annoyed. ‘What?’

 

‘You don’t have to do that.’ Remus made a face. ‘I don’t even know if I want to eat.’

 

‘Well, I’ll make you something to take with you,’ Sirius said. He needed to do something to take his mind off of whatever was going on here.

 

Remus gave him a look he couldn’t read and then crossed the kitchen to him. It wasn’t far, because the kitchen was tiny, but for a fleeting second Sirius’s heart stuttered and stopped because he thought Remus was going to kiss him.

 

Instead, Remus put the full palm of his hand on Sirius’s face and smooshed down his nose. This was a call back to an ancient Marauder joke, the origins of which were lost in the haze of time: a clumsy stroke of the face, usually done as hard as possible for maximum annoyance, followed by a compliment. The compliment was most often, ‘You’re pretty,’ but could range far and wide, the more absurd the better. The classic example had been Peter crushing Remus’s ear when Remus was moaning about some girl, and saying lovingly, ‘You’re moony.’

 

‘You’re sweet,’ Remus said now. He grinned and Sirius tried to grin back while restarting respiration.

 

 

After Remus had left the flat, on his way to Oxford for a whole eight days, Sirius attempted to get his life on track enough to get ready for work. In a haze, he stared into the bathroom mirror for so long that he wound up having to take the tube instead of walking to work. The trains were packed but he barely noticed. It was a teaching day, but even teaching sixty children how to make their own totem poles out of clay wasn’t quite distracting enough and his thoughts kept straying to an imagined dark and dusty library and Remus’s curly head bent over the books. After the kids had left, he went to the office and sat, vaguely staring down at a report about museum education that he was supposed to be reading. Mostly, he was brooding. Sirius had once been an excellent brooder, but the topics that he normally concentrated on, like how awful his family was and whether or not he was a good person himself, were rather different than this one. He also found that he’d gotten rather out of practice in the last year, which probably meant something in and of itself.

 

He felt like he’d been emotionally sucker-punched, repeatedly. He couldn’t tell if the aches in his body were physical or were the result of watching Remus walk out the door that morning.

 

Eventually he managed to lift his head off his hands and pick up a pen. He took out a blank sheet of paper and wrote:

 

_Given that I’m in love with Remus_

 

And then he stopped writing, and let the pen dangle in his hand. That was a big given.

 

It made some kind of cosmic sense, really. Sirius had always been notorious for being the one Marauder who could get any girl he’d wanted. He had never gone through a phase of unrequited love (like James and Peter) or been rejected (like James and Peter) or felt like he couldn’t get into a serious relationship because of a chronic illness (as Remus had occasionally alluded to, although never come right out and said). And so of course when Sirius finally felt something for someone that was more than fleeting sexual attraction, but instead felt something that he was starting to suspect was a lot more, well, serious – well of course that person would be out of reach. Out of reach seemed like the perfect analogy for what it was, too – he had watched Remus from right beside him at the pub and it had seemed like, even though he could have easily put a hand on his face, even leaned slightly out of his seat and kissed him right on the mouth – Remus was impossibly far out of reach. 

 

Sirius pushed back his chair; stood up; collected his coat, and marched out the door. He was going to find a pub and an owl, maybe not in that order.   

 

He needed a drink.

 

Then, he needed James.

 

 

 

He sloshed into the pub and plunked down opposite James at the usual corner table. Without preamble, he said, ‘I think I’m having a crisis’

 

James put down his pint and snorted. ‘What was your first clue? That you’re an hour late?’ He pushed a second pint in Sirius’s direction. ‘And what have you been doing? You stink of liquor.’

 

‘Well,’ Sirius said, choosing to remain above the fray and ignore both the former and the latter, ‘I’ve been questioning my sexuality.’

 

James looked flabbergasted. ‘Is this about that night we went to Brighton? Because I know I looked good but honestly Padfoot…’

 

Sirius sobered up enough to give James the evil eye. James raised his eyebrows. ‘So no more naked night swimming?’

 

‘Shut the fuck up, Prongs.’

 

James considered that, and he stopped having his ‘having a laugh’ face on and replaced it with a more serious one. It made Sirius’s skin crawl. He imagined James wearing that face when his unborn baby was an unruly teenager and had just been caught enchanting a motorbike. Perhaps the motorbike that Uncle Sirius gave to him…

 

‘Seriously, Padfoot. What are you on about?’

 

Sirius set down his pint glass, picked it back up again. His stomach flipped over and he regretted his life choices, the ones he’d made that had brought him to this point, where he’d had all these pints and then run all over town and then sat down here and decided to start having this conversation. And why excoriate himself for just those things? Why not go back to the day when Remus had moved in to his flat, or back to the day when he first met Remus and, he had to assume, first felt that little tightness in his chest that had recently been magnified into a crushing weight on his sternum. He put down the pint glass again. James’ face was becoming increasingly serious; a worried line was appearing between his eyebrows and he was pursing his lips. Sirius pictured him as an old man: deep wrinkles in these places, from all the worrying that Sirius combined with James’ real and potential future children would cause him to do over the years. It was a thought that was both reassuring and disturbing. Sirius wasn’t sure which more; he was having a lot of feelings and frankly the sheer quantity of them was getting frightening.

 

‘So what are you talking about?’ James prodded.

 

‘It’s not obvious?’ Sirius asked.

 

‘No.’

 

 _Well that was good_ , Sirius thought. ‘Well that’s good,’ he said aloud. ‘Maybe Remus doesn’t know either.’ He laughed. ‘That would be embarrassing.’

 

‘Maybe Remus doesn’t know what?’ James asked patiently. ‘Also, let’s be honest, if it’s something embarrassing, I’m sure Moony would love to hear it. He loves a good embarrassing story about you.’

 

‘Who doesn’t,’ Sirius opined. ‘I’m a pretty embarrassing person.’ He paused, lost the thread, re-found it. ‘But I’m not joking around here, Prongs. I’m having a crisis.’

 

‘You said,’ James said. He paused, clearly made a conscious decision to soldier on. ‘You also mentioned your… sexuality.’

 

‘Right.’ Sirius took another drink. His glass was empty. Damn, when had that happened? ‘I think I need another drink.’

 

‘That’s not a crisis,’ James said. So reasonable nowadays, that James. And when had _that_ happened? Not on _my_ watch, Sirius thought. Not. On. My. Watch. Not—

 

‘Except right now,’ James said, ‘it might be. No more drinks for you. Explain what the hell is going on.’

 

Sirius took some more deep breaths. He was definitely going to say it now. Right now. Definitely. Riiiiiiight. Noooooooow. ‘James, I think I might be possibly, ok, almost probably, but possibly for sure, I think I might be…’ He stopped. He wasn’t sure what to say. James was staring at him. Sirius decided to go for it. ‘I’m in love with Remus.’

 

James didn’t say anything for a period of time. When it became clear that that period of time was going to be an extended one, Sirius tried to count the seconds, but he kept getting confused around the number five, so he gave up and guessed at a random figure like, oh, say, five hundred and ninety-trillion six four three thirty-nine…

 

‘Remus?’ James said finally. ‘Our Remus? Our friend, Remus? Also known as Moony?’

 

‘That’s the one,’ Sirius said, pleased that James seemed to have grasped the situation. ‘The very one.’

 

James was frowning now. ‘How many girls would you say you snogged at Hogwarts?’

 

‘Who can say?’ Sirius asked, confused by the line of questioning. Then he saw the logic of it. ‘So you’re saying it’s weird that I’m in love with Remus –‘ (It felt so much more real to say it the second time. And not just more real, but also better. He wanted to say it again, and again, and again.) ‘—when there were all those girls. That’s fair. I understand that. But consider: I don’t remember half of their names. The ones I do remember, it’s not for their snogging abilities. I mean, I remember that girl Sara Banks because of her third nipple… god that thing was weird… but that’s not the point. Just two weeks ago I went on a date with an incredibly attractive, incredibly successful woman and all I wanted to do was go home and sit in my pyjamas with Moony.’

 

‘Well that’s…’ James clearly didn’t know what to say, but Sirius could tell that he wanted to say the right thing. Sirius appreciated it, so much. ‘I guess I just don’t know what to say, Sirius. This seems… confusing. Are you sure? But why… why Moony? And what led to you realising this? I mean, isn’t it a few years too late?’

 

Sirius had an answer for that, and he thought it might even be the right one. ‘It’s not like anyone ever said that I had another option, besides snogging all those girls, you know? It’s not like anyone said, “here, try snogging some boys for a while and see how that makes you feel”.’

 

‘You could have been like me and Pete,’ James suggested. ‘You could have not snogged anyone.’

 

‘That wasn’t exactly a choice that you two made though, was it?’ Sirius asked. ‘That was down to sheer unattractiveness.’

 

‘Yeah,’ James said with a sigh. ‘But…’

 

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Sirius said quickly. ‘I liked those girls. I liked snogging them. Snogging is fun, as I think you’ve finally been able to learn now that Lily has been kind enough to take you in…’

 

‘You know we’ve been together for three years, right?  You know we’re having a child together, right?’

 

‘She’s a real miracle worker. Her commitment to charity is just immense.’ Sirius accompanied this last with a lewd gesture designed to emphasise what thing – well, two things really – about Lily were immense, just for old times’ sake. Then again he supposed discovering that he was a… well, not to put too fine a point on it, a _homosexual_ , wasn’t exactly a death knell for casually misogynistic humour. Or maybe it was? Maybe he should feel some sort of solidarity with women? And wasn’t it bizarre to think of himself as some kind of… minority? There were so many fascinating elements to this whole thing. If Remus would just return his feelings, it would be wonderful to start finding out about them. Remus was already a minority! Remus would understand too! That was great. Except of course this would be opening Remus up to even more disapproval from mainstream society, so maybe it was actually terrible. Maybe Sirius would be doing something bad to Remus. That didn’t feel good. 

 

‘Hey, Earth to Sirius. Fucking snap out of being drunk, or if you can’t do that, at least look at me.’

 

Sirius focused his eyes on James. It took a lot of effort. ‘What?’

 

‘How do you know?’ James said. He said it like he’d already said it a number of times.

 

‘Just… lots of things,’ Sirius said. ‘Lots of little things adding up. It all came together today. Well, last night.’ He thought of the way Remus had looked saying goodbye this morning, hungover as hell and so fucking gorgeous, and the way he’d looked last night at the pub, still the cheeky schoolboy with his hair askew and bright dashes of colour on his cheeks. ‘It doesn’t matter how, I don’t think. I know it’s true. It’s like asking you how you knew you loved Lily. What, did she look good in a Hogwarts robe?’

 

‘Well,’ James said. ‘Well. I mean, she did look good in those robes.’ They looked at each other across the table, which suddenly felt like an expanse wider than the Sahara. Sirius wasn’t sure what he wanted James to say, but he wanted him to say _something_. He wondered if that was fair. It was maybe a lot to handle. They’d all been such close friends but adulthood had shifted things around, rearranged them, and sometimes seemed intent upon subsuming them entirely. Sirius wondered if this was the last gasp of his adolescence, a desperate desire to reinvent the one thing that had kept him afloat through those turbulent, miserable years. He hoped not.

 

‘I mean, I don’t care, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ James said, and the gulf between them stuttered and collapsed. ‘At least you’re not in love with me, right?’ Sirius grinned and James grinned back, then looked serious again. ‘But, damn, Sirius, isn’t it a bit late to be figuring this out? How long have you known Moony now? Ten years?’

 

‘I know,’ Sirius said. His relief at James’s reaction felt like a physical thing. ‘I know, and it’s crazy. It really is crazy.’ He laughed, a single bark, and looked down into his empty glass.

 

‘What are you going to do?’ James asked. ‘Are you going to tell him?’

 

‘Think I should?’ Sirius asked. ‘I don’t know.’ He hadn’t thought this step through. ‘I like what we have.’

 

‘And you don’t want more?’

 

‘I mean, yeah, I do. I’m not sure what more is but… I think I do want it.’

 

James looked away. ‘I don’t know if I’m ready to confront the sexual side of this thing, Padfoot.’

 

‘Me either,’ Sirius confessed. ‘I thought about it earlier.’ He didn’t report that he wasn’t ready to confront how incredibly amazing it had been. Just remembering it was doing things to him that he probably shouldn’t be confronting in a crowded pub.  

 

‘Well,’ James said. ‘Well.’ He took a deep breath. ‘What was it like?’

 

Sirius shrugged, suddenly intensely embarrassed. He thought of all the embarrassing things he knew about James and tried to weigh them up against the confession that he wanted Remus to bend him over the kitchen table and fuck him – like, really fuck him, like, penetrate him – until they were a sweaty, sticky mess, and then fuck him some more; then he tried to weigh those things he knew about James, terrible, horrible, just really downright devastatingly embarrassing things, against the fact that after all that bent-over-the-table, taking-it-up-the-bum stuff he wanted Remus to hold him as they lay side by side in bed and to whisper sweet nothings in his ear, sweet nothings that would mean everything. ‘It got the job done,’ he said, making a weak wanking gesture.

 

James looked both fascinated and horrified. ‘But what did you… think about?’ He lowered his voice, as if anyone could hear them in a Muggle pub with a football match playing on the tv. ‘Did you think about… his… penis?’

 

Sirius hesitated, and he knew that the answer was written on his face. ‘A bit, I guess,’ he said, not wanting to lie but also not wanting to mention that, extremely drunk not an hour ago, he’d thought extensively enough about it to have gotten a banana out of the kitchen and practiced sucking it off. ‘I don’t know, James. I don’t know what it would be like. But I know that I want to find out.’

 

James still looked torn between fascination and horror. ‘I guess you must really mean it then,’ he said, as if the notion that Sirius could possibly have thought about Remus’s penis in a sexual context without vomiting was somehow what clinched the deal. Sirius diplomatically neglected to point out that he and James had once wanked off together when drunk, horny sixteen year olds and that James hadn’t seemed to mind the presence of a non-domestic penis too much then.

 

‘I do mean it,’ he said. ‘Trust me, Prongs.’

 

James sighed. ‘Well I’m sorry mate, but it seems… unlikely that Moony might feel the same way.’

 

‘Yeah,’ Sirius agreed. ‘That’s the core of the thing, isn’t it? It’s completely unlikely.’

 

‘Maybe you’ll get over it,’ James suggested. ‘Like, it’s just a phase or something.’

 

Sirius shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ He looked at James, steadier now. ‘But I don’t think so.’

 

‘I kind of thought you’d say that,’ James admitted. ‘When you decide something, you don’t second guess yourself.’

 

‘No looking back,’ Sirius said. He wondered if James believed that, or if, for that matter, he himself believed it.

 

‘Well…’ James hesitated. ‘Maybe we should ask Lily for advice.’

 

‘Do we really have to bring Yoko into this?’ Sirius asked. It was an old joke – Peter had come up with it three years ago, in fact – and the sting had gone out of it. Sirius just couldn’t imagine what Lily would tell him that James couldn’t.

 

‘Yes Macca, we do,’ James said, ‘at least, I think we should. Because here’s what I think.’ James leaned forward, across the table, his face suddenly intense. ‘I think you have to tell Remus. And then if he says no, I think you can’t live together anymore. It’s no use pining for someone who it’s never going to work out with.’

 

‘Pot, kettle, and I’m Sirius Black,’ Sirius snapped. Another old joke. Why didn’t they come up with new ones? ‘How long did you pine after Lily? She didn’t even let you kiss her until we were a year out of Hogwarts!’

 

‘I know,’ James said, ‘and I was a miserable sod. But more than that, I had more of a chance with Lily all those years than you will with Remus if he isn’t… gay, or whatever you want to call it. So if there’s no chance, then I think you need to get some distance. And that’s the best advice I can give you. But I want to talk to Lily and see what she says before we start really breaking up the band.’

 

Sirius put his head in his hands and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. ‘I don’t want to do that,’ he said. ‘What if I just… never say a word.’

 

‘You said yourself that you wanted more.’

 

‘So? I’d rather have us all be friends than… whatever you’re proposing.’

 

‘It would be better in the long run,’ James said. ‘I don’t want you to be miserable.’

 

Sirius peeked out from between his fingers. James was still there. ‘You’re a good friend, you know.’

 

‘I’m your best friend,’ James confirmed. ‘So what do you say? Shall we ask Lily?’

 

 

To say that Lily was pregnant would have been an understatement. With her tiny frame, she appeared to be about fifty percent stomach. Still, she pulled it off well. She didn’t even look out of place in the pub.

 

James was forcing Sirius to drink water instead of beer, which was mean, and miserable, and he didn’t like James for it but he also secretly sort of really liked him for it, because it was a nice thing to do. So he complained, but not too much, while Lily got situated and they exchanged pleasantries.

 

‘So you two didn’t call me out to your little pub night just because you missed my company,’ she said after Sirius had inquired for the second time about her day.

 

‘I did miss your company though,’ James said.

 

‘I didn’t,’ Sirius said. ‘But James thinks you can give me some advice.’

 

Lily raised her eyebrows. ‘Be less patronising,’ she suggested.

 

Sirius blinked. ‘What?’

 

‘Don’t fuck with him,’ James said, ‘he’s drunk.’

 

Lily sighed. ‘Oh fine,’ she said. ‘And stop saying fuck, James, you know the baby can almost hear you!’ She stopped and then said, ‘Oh fuck, I just said it! Fuck!’

 

‘Oh no,’ James said, looking horrified. ‘I completely forgot, we’ve got to stop saying fuck!’

 

Sirius cleared his throat. ‘Even if the baby can hear you, he can’t understand you, right? So he has no idea if “fuck” is bad or not. And you’ve got six weeks or however long it takes for these things to be up and running around before you have to worry about it talking. And by that point he’ll probably understand that it’s bad. They don’t rebel until they’re in their teens.’

 

Lily’s lips twitched. ‘Next week on parenting tips from childrearing wizard Sirius Black, why your child still isn’t saying complete words at six weeks: he’s probably just stupid.’

 

‘You know what,’ Sirius started and James held up a hand.

 

‘Not important,’ he said. Lily opened her mouth and James pursed his lips and repeated, ‘Not. Important. Stop bickering. Lily, Sirius needs your advice about a real problem he is having in his life.’

 

‘Ok,’ Lily said. ‘What’s that?’

 

Sirius and James looked at each other. When James didn’t seem likely to speak, Sirius said, ‘I’m in love with Remus.’

 

For probably the first time in their at-this-point long acquaintance, Lily didn’t come back at him with a sarcastic reply. She stared at him for a few seconds and then ran a hand through her fringe and said, ‘Well. That’s… hm.’

 

‘Yeah,’ James encouraged her. ‘It certainly is.’

 

‘Is what?’ Sirius demanded. ‘Is “hm”? What the fuck does that mean?’

 

‘The baby,’ James said through gritted teeth. ‘Stop saying fuck in front of the baby!’

 

‘It’s…’ Lily frowned. ‘It’s not…’ She gave Sirius a sympathetic look. ‘When did you… realise?’

 

‘This morning. Well, last night, really, but I had been drinking, so, this morning.’ Sirius huffed out some air and regarded Lily. He was starting to be better at focusing, which meant he was sobering up, which meant that he was probably about to be a miserable sod again. ‘Bad news, right?’

 

‘Not… necessarily,’ Lily said.

 

‘What?’ James squawked. ‘What do you mean?’

 

‘I mean, it’s good that you’ve come to some realisation about yourself,’ Lily said. ‘Because I assume that this explains the completely negligent way you’ve treated every girl you’ve ever dated.’

 

James frowned but Sirius shrugged and nodded. ‘Yeah, I suppose in some ways it does,’ he said. ‘They’re just not as… as interesting, to me.’

 

‘Right,’ Lily said. ‘That makes sense. Because you’re a good friend, so I’ve always found it kind of weird how you neglect your romantic relationships.’ She smiled at him. ‘So, this is good from the viewpoint that you’ve figured that out.’

 

‘Ok,’ Sirius said, ‘great, self-realisation and all that…’ James glared and Sirius rolled his eyes and said, ‘all that _stuff_ , but that doesn’t really solve the big crisis here, which is the part about Remus.’

 

‘Mm,’ Lily said. ‘No, but is there going to be a solution to that? I mean, he’s straight, right? So you’ll have to move on.’

 

Sirius felt like a fist was suddenly squeezing his internal organs. He’d thought when Lily said that it wasn’t bad news that she had some insider information on Remus, that she knew something or had seen something that would suggest… He looked up at her and saw in her face that she knew what he was thinking. She reached out and put a hand on top of his, her face full of sympathy.

 

‘I’m really sorry, Sirius, I didn’t mean to raise your hopes. You and Remus do have a really special friendship but…’

 

‘Yeah,’ Sirius said. ‘Yeah, I know.’ He looked up at the ceiling and focused on the tiles there. He felt like an idiot.

 

‘So I guess our question is,’ James said, after a moment, and Sirius blessed him for taking the pressure off of him, ‘should Sirius tell Remus how he feels?’

 

‘Oh,’ Lily said. ‘That’s a tough one, isn’t it.’

 

Sirius nodded. ‘James thinks I should.’

 

‘Since they live together, and all,’ James said.

 

‘Because you think Sirius needs some distance,’ Lily said. ‘To get over him.’

 

‘Exactly,’ James said. ‘I just think that sharing the same house is going to be really difficult for him.’

 

‘And Remus won’t be cruel about it. You know Remus will be so nice to him.’

 

Sirius cleared his throat to try to dislodge the lump of emotion there. ‘I’m right here, you know.’

 

‘Right,’ Lily said, ‘so you are. And there’s your answer, I think. You need to tell Remus. Sooner, rather than later. It’ll make it easier to get over him, too, when you have a definitive answer.’

 

‘He’s in Oxford,’ Sirius said plaintively. ‘Doing research. For days and days.’

 

‘Oh,’ Lily said, ‘I’m sure it can wait until he gets home.’

 

‘But I don’t want to wait until he gets home,’ Sirius said, and he couldn’t keep the rising whine out of his voice. ‘I want to go to him now. I want to be where he is.’ He plunked his head down on the sticky table and said, ‘I’m a complete idiot.’

 

‘Not at all,’ said James bracingly, ‘but you will never, ever make fun of me for anything I did regarding Lily. Ever again.’

 

‘I can’t make that promise,’ Sirius said into the table. ‘This has been one evening. We’re talking years and years of your life, James.’

 

‘That’s quite sweet,’ Lily said, ‘on both your parts, I’m sure.’ Sirius glanced up, caught her rolling her eyes, but she was smiling too. ‘Sirius, I’m so sorry. This must be really difficult.’

 

Sirius huffed and put his forehead back onto the table. After a minute he said, ‘I want to go to him in Oxford. What if there’s a chance…’ He trailed off, managed to raise his head without wanting to die, or cry, or vomit. Lily and James were looking at each other, concern on their faces. Not for the first time, Sirius hated them for their easy love.

 

‘Maybe take some time to think,’ Lily suggested. ‘Make sure that, well, that you’re sure.’

 

‘I’m sure,’ Sirius said flatly. ‘And I don’t want to put this off.’

 

‘Ok,’ James said. ‘Go see him there. If you have a day off or you think you need to, or… well, you know.’

 

Sirius stood up, unsteady. James reached out to him but he waved off his hand. ‘I’ll go out there Saturday,’ he said. ‘Don’t have a day off until then.’

 

‘Ok,’ James said. ‘Let us know how it goes, mate.’

 

Sirius tottered towards the door. He felt a strange sense of urgency to be back in the flat, in the flat he shared with Remus, in their shared space, among Remus’s things.

 

‘And Sirius – ‘ Lily called. He turned back to look at her. ‘Don’t take your motorcycle, if you do go,’ she said gently. ‘You’ll probably wreck it from nerves.’

 

Sirius sighed. Lily really did make an awful lot of sense.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't want to read some fairly explicit sexytimes, then you probably shouldn't read this chapter. Otherwise, thanks for reading!

On Saturday morning, Sirius set off for Oxford.

 

At Russell Square, he almost turned back. He also almost turned back at Kings Cross, and when he got to Paddington, and had to hand over Muggle money for a rail ticket, he almost turned back five times between finding the ticket sales area and looking for the platform. He boarded a train to Reading and almost turned back there too, standing on the platform as a fine mist settled on his shoulders and hair, but his feet kept him standing as the train to Oxford pulled up and then propelled him on board. The train was crowded, supporters heading to a football match, loud and jostling. He stood in the rocking corridor, next to a toilet whose door kept swinging open and shut, as everyone around him drank and grew increasingly rowdy. Inside of him, similar chaos churned. The train pulled into Oxford a half hour away from Reading, and while he briefly entertained the thought of crossing the platform and walking straight onto the London train, he made it across the station and out onto the streets of Oxford.

 

From his last trip there, he had a vague recollection of where to go. He walked up the hill towards the university, past the castle and then an ugly brick shopping centre. Shoppers were out in full force, bustling through the light rain. He felt increasingly ill, like he was walking towards his execution. He turned off of the High Street and down a narrow cobblestone lane. The ground sloped downhill to a path between some high trees. He pushed through the iron gate and looked at the stone wall to his right. He clearly remembered Remus tapping at it, saying something or other, but he was damned if he could remember what it was. What a mess he’d made of this!

 

He sat down against the wall. The occasional tourist group walked by, umbrellas held high. A group of loud people with North American accents passed, all wearing shorts and sandals and shivering. He tried to focus on feeling the magic in the wall behind him and therefore a way through, but his thoughts were following a pattern familiar to him (though he wouldn’t admit it): a dog chasing its own tail. _Remus,_ the thought went, _Remus is near here. But does he want to see me? Why am I here?_ It circled and circled.

 

‘Excuse me.’

 

Sirius looked up from his reverie. An older man whose clothing sense suggested more than usual eccentricity was giving him a mildly annoyed look.

 

‘Could you move?’ the man asked. ‘I’ve dropped a coin and I think you’re sitting on it.’

 

‘Actually,’ Sirius said, standing and feeling certain that there was no coin, ‘maybe you could help me. I’m looking for a college that I thought was here. St Cyprian’s?’ The man’s face betrayed nothing, so Sirius babbled onward. ‘My friend is staying here, Remus is his name, he and I were at Hogwarts together, in Gryffindor, maybe you know Minerva McGonagall, our head of house?’

 

‘And why,’ the man interrupted, ‘are you waiting outside of the college if your friend is inside?’

 

Sirius took a deep breath. ‘I’m surprising him, actually. I’ve been here once before, a few years ago, when he was a student here, so I don’t remember how to get inside.’

 

The man raised his eyebrows. ‘You don’t remember how to get inside because no one ever told you. That knowledge is reserved for fellows and students of the college.’

 

‘Ah,’ Sirius said. They looked at each other. Then Sirius asked, ‘Do you think you could help me out?’

 

‘I know Remus,’ the man said coolly. ‘An excellent student, despite his… condition. He’s doing research at the Bodleian today. It’s the large library with the central courtyard.’ He pointed towards town. ‘You can find him there.’

 

Sirius nodded, suddenly hating the man. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

 

At the library, he found that he could not go inside without a student card. The woman staffing the desk was sympathetic and let him sit inside of the stone-walled foyer so that he was shielded from the rain, but she went off shift two hours later and the next librarian wasn’t so nice. Sirius wound up standing in the courtyard, huddled close to the wall to avoid the rain. After what felt like years – anxiety gnawing at his stomach all the while – the library closed. Of course Remus was one of the last people out, emerging from the big carved wooden doors whilst talking animatedly to a librarian. Sirius felt like a complete fool and was trying to think of an inconspicuous spell to disappear into the stone wall when Remus said goodbye to the librarian, bent down to tighten a shoelace, and saw him.

 

Remus’s eyes widened. Sirius had a distinct feeling that the jig was up and stepped forward, his wet hair dripping into his eyes. ‘Heya,’ he said. He tried to make it sound normal, like, ‘Heya, I just happened to take a train out to see you and then stand in the rain for several hours waiting for you, but it’s definitely not weird.’

 

‘Hiya,’ Remus said. He straightened up. ‘What are you doing here, Padfoot? Is everything ok?’

 

‘Yeah,’ Sirius said. ‘Just thought I’d… come out and see you.’ _God, you’re an idiot_ , he thought to himself.   _Why didn’t you think this part through?_

 

‘Is Lily ok?’ Remus asked.

 

‘Yeah, yeah, she’s fine.’ Sirius’s hands in his pockets were shaking and getting sticky with sweat. _How does Remus do this to me?_ he asked himself. He had never in his life been so nervous. He’d thought he was cool, but apparently he’d thought wrong. ‘Look, do you want to get some dinner?’

 

Remus cocked his head, his face clearly saying, _I am missing something here,_ and said, ‘Yeah, that sounds good. Let’s get out of this rain.’

 

 

‘So,’ Remus said after dinner. They had just stepped out of the restaurant – Italian something or other and not memorable at all – after chatting about basically nothing of importance for an hour. It was drizzling now, the water just a touch denser than mist, and Remus had turned up his collar and shoved his hands into his pockets. Sirius’s heart was fluttering in his chest like a trapped bird. He wanted to release it and hand it to Remus, who would cup his hands around the little struggling thing and soothe it instantly with his touch. He also wanted to stop thinking such incredibly soppy things, and he wondered if this was what it was like to be James _all the time_.

 

‘So,’ he agreed.

 

Remus cleared his throat. ‘Shall I walk you to the train station?’ he asked.

 

 _Do it_. Sirius swallowed. ‘Actually, I was wondering if we could, uhm, go somewhere and talk.’

 

Remus cocked his head. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Is everything ok?’

 

Sirius nodded, barely trusting himself to speak. ‘Yeah, I just want to talk to you about something and it’s raining and…’

 

‘And all of dinner didn’t suffice for a real conversation,’ Remus said, but he said it gently. ‘Let’s walk.’

                                                                                                                                                         

They walked down Turl Street, across the High, and then through a maze of narrow alleyways and cobblestoned lanes between sandstone walls. Water clung to Sirius’s hair and dripped into his eyes, and although he felt that if he really were some romantic hero, he wouldn’t have noticed the rain, in reality he very much did, because he was starting to get properly wet and it was miserable.

 

They came to the wall, and Remus tapped his wand and said the words and they passed through the stone. Inside the quad, there was very little activity. The porter nodded to them and Remus smiled and waved in return. Sirius’s heart continued to sound its terrified irregular drumbeat as they went around the grass quad and up a staircase.

 

Remus let them into a small room at the top of the stairs and said, ‘I’ll just make some tea,’ before disappearing off down the hallway. Sirius looked around: a narrow bed, a desk and chair, a large wooden wardrobe, and a floor lamp were the only furniture in the room. Remus’s bag was open on the floor, clothing and books spilling out of it, and Sirius moved it slightly and sat down on the desk chair. He felt that sitting on the bed would be too forward. He tried to slow his breathing and wound up close to hyperventilating. Remus returned, bearing two cups of tea, and shut the door. The lock made a loud snick as it caught. Sirius took the tea from Remus and set it onto the desk. Remus gave him an expectant look. Sirius tried to avoid Remus’s eyes and was secretly hateful that Remus was blocking his exit by standing near the door.

 

‘Do you want to take off your coat?’ Remus asked. ‘It might dry out a bit if we hang it on the door.’

 

‘Oh, right,’ Sirius mumbled. He stood and removed the coat, then sat back down, running his hands over his thighs.

 

‘Padfoot, if you don’t want to live with me anymore, I’ll understand,’ Remus said suddenly. Sirius jerked his head up, startled. ‘I’ve tried to be a good flatmate, but I know that I can keep weird hours, and leave the sink a mess, and drink out of the carton…’

 

‘That,’ Sirius said, finding his voice, ‘is not at all what I wanted to say.’

 

‘Oh,’ Remus said, and he broke into a wide smile. ‘Well that’s good, because I quite like being your flatmate.’

 

‘I quite like it too,’ Sirius said. He took a deep breath. ‘Look, do you want to sit down?’

 

‘Sure,’ Remus said. He sat, gave Sirius his tea, and sipped at his own. Sirius took several more deep breaths.

 

‘You know you can tell me anything,’ Remus said quietly. ‘I told you about being a werewolf.’

 

‘Not quite the same,’ Sirius said. ‘I told you I knew you were and still had to drag the truth out of you.’

 

‘And here we are,’ Remus said blithely, as if the scene down by the lake that day, twelve year old Remus breaking down into tears and begging Sirius to stay his friend, had never happened, ‘perfectly happy. So whatever you have to say, the truth is probably the best policy.’

 

Sirius set his tea on the desk carefully. His hands were shaking again and he was going to slosh it everywhere. He ran a hand through his hair and tried to organise his thoughts. Lily had said that he should just come out and say it. Lily was sensible. And James, James had agreed with her. Sometimes James was sensible. Then again, maybe he should have consulted with Peter? Gotten a third opinion? He probably shouldn’t proceed until he did that.

 

‘What could be so terrible that you can’t tell me?’ Remus asked.

 

Sirius looked up at Remus. Remus’s smile was so warm and kind. He swallowed, breathed in, breathed out. He’d come all this way. ‘What if I told you that I loved you?’

 

Remus’s gaze went slightly out of focus. He set his teacup down on the desk with utmost care. The seconds ticked away. Then he looked back at Sirius and Sirius took another deep breath just to stay tethered to the earth.

 

‘Do you?’ Remus asked.

 

‘Yes.’

 

Remus inhaled sharply. ‘Sirius, I don’t…’

 

‘It’s ok,’ Sirius said quickly. He felt like he was drifting away from the situation, like if he looked down he would see his own body pantomiming the rest of this conversation. His soul was going to float up and up and live inside of those seconds before Remus said whatever he was about to say. ‘I don’t mind.’

 

Remus pursed his lips. ‘You don’t mind?’

 

‘I just wanted you to know,’ Sirius clarified, his own voice very distant to his ears. ‘We can go back to normal now.’

 

‘What?’ Remus asked, and Sirius was abruptly yanked back down into his body, where all was clanging alarm bells and emerging emotional pain. ‘Go back to normal?’

 

‘Go back to just being friends,’ Sirius said. “Pretend I never said that.”

 

‘Wait, what do you actually mean?’ Remus demanded. ‘You _love_ me? Like, you are _in_ love with me?’

 

Sirius nodded, miserable.

 

‘Are you trying to tell me that you’re gay?’

 

‘Well,’ Sirius said, and everything was spilling out now, he felt like his intestines were slithering to the floor, ‘yes, I think so.’

 

‘What about all those girls?’ Remus asked, exasperated. ‘Didn’t you just go on a date, just, I don’t know, two weeks ago?’

 

‘You and James are obsessed with these girls. Can’t a man love them and leave them and realise that it was because he was making a mistake the whole time?’ Sirius demanded. Remus raised his eyebrows and Sirius flapped his hands in annoyance. ‘I left my date to come back and eat dinner with you,’ he snapped. ‘I got to the pub and it was just… I just wanted to come home.’ He took a deep breath and smiled ruefully. ‘Crazy, huh?’

 

‘Well that doesn’t prove…’ Remus trailed off and looked at him. Whatever he saw on Sirius’s face must have been quite convincing. ‘You just now figured all this out?’

 

‘Sorry,’ Sirius said. ‘Yes, I did. Well, a few days ago. At the cricket match.’

 

Remus snorted and looked away. ‘The romance of Watford?’

 

‘It doesn’t matter where,’ Sirius said quietly. ‘You were there. I was there. There was nothing I could do.’

 

Remus looked back at him and his face was startled, tender. ‘Oh, Padfoot. Sirius. What should I say?’

 

‘You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted, well, I just thought I should tell you.’ Sirius took a shaky drink of tea. It was still quite hot. It burned his tongue and he was surprised to find that he could still feel that. ‘You know me, always inappropriate.’

 

‘Oh, Sirius,’ Remus said. Sirius looked at his face quickly but found that he couldn’t gaze too long. Remus looked unbearably kind. He put out a hand and touched Sirius’s where it met the handle of the tea cup, just for a second. The touch was like a little flare of light inside of a black cave. ‘Let’s back up a second while I think. Did you say something about James?’

 

‘Yeah, I talked to him a few nights ago.’

 

‘What did he say?’

 

‘He said I should tell you. And then we talked to Lily, and she said that too. But I didn’t talk to Peter and maybe I should have but…’

 

‘James didn’t take the piss?’

 

Sirius shook his head and Remus let out a whoosh of air. ‘You must have been pretty convincing then.’

 

‘Am I not convincing you now?’

 

‘You are,’ Remus said. ‘I just have no idea what to say.’

 

‘Say…’ Sirius paused. He managed to raise his eyes again, look up at Remus. He was still looking so tender and kind. Of course he would be. Classic Moony. Sirius loved him so much that it was a physical ache. ‘Say what you feel.’

 

‘Surprise,’ Remus said. He paused. ‘Flattered, I think.’

 

‘Why?’

 

Remus smiled. ‘Well, you’re quite good looking, right? Implying you could be quite choosy.’

 

Sirius blinked. ‘You think so?’

 

‘I’m not blind, Sirius,’ Remus said gently. ‘Not to mention the way that women treat you.’

 

‘Well that’s something then,’ Sirius said, all fluttery feelings now. ‘Any other thoughts?’

 

‘Confusion?’ Remus suggested. ‘I’ve never… I’ve never even considered being attracted to a man before.’

 

‘Me either,’ Sirius said quickly, ‘until quite recently.’

 

‘But I’m not even sure that… well, that it’s possible.’ Remus reached out his hand again, placed it atop Sirius’s, and stroked the back of his hand. Sirius shivered involuntarily and Remus cocked his head. ‘I guess you’re sure, though.’

 

‘Yes,’ Sirius whispered. He didn’t even want to think about what just the touch of Remus’s hand was doing to him. Maybe this was what he’d been missing all these years, after all those so-so encounters with various women.  They had been nice, but this, this was fucking electric.

 

‘How would you feel about an experiment?’ Remus asked. Sirius looked up at Remus, who had an intense look on his face that Sirius had never seen before. It was heart-stopping.

 

‘What kind of experiment?’

 

Remus took a deep breath. ‘Kiss me.’

 

Sirius blinked. ‘Really?’

 

‘Before we worry about anything,’ Remus said, ‘we should find out if it’s even possible for me to be attracted to you. So, kiss me.’

 

Sirius stared at Remus. ‘You’re crazy, you know that, right?’

 

‘Why?’

 

Sirius rolled his eyes. ‘Well, I just told you, that, you know, and your response was to come up with an experiment.’

 

‘It’s not a great experiment,’ Remus said briskly. ‘No control group.’

 

Sirius turned his hand palm up and twisted his fingers around Remus’s. ‘What kind of control group do you want?’ he asked, suddenly feeling light headed, because this, well, _this seemed like it was really happening_.

 

‘Some women,’ Remus suggested. ‘A few other men. Maybe a vampire.’

 

‘I won’t help you with that,’ Sirius said. And then it was so easy just to lean across the distance between them, tugging Remus closer with their joined hands, and to kiss him on his suddenly startled, open, gorgeous mouth. _And what if this is the only time?_ Sirius thought, and he tried to savour every second, but it was over so quickly, Remus pulling back, leaving Sirius half out of his seat, squeezing Remus’s hand as tightly as he could, using his other hand to brace himself up against the desk.

 

He sank backwards onto the chair and they sat in silence for a few moments. Their hands were still joined on the table between them. He circled Remus’s thumb with his index finger rhythmically. Implosions were going off inside of his body, tremors of sensation and amazement. All he could think was, _this, this is it_. _This is right_.

 

‘So,’ Remus said after a minute. His voice cracked; he cleared his throat and tried again. ‘So, I’ve thought of another problem with the experiment.’

 

‘Oh?’ Sirius asked. He managed to look at Remus, fully look at him, and saw that his mouth was red, his cheeks flushed and his damp hair mussed. He was beautiful. Sirius wanted to stop time right there, but he knew it had to go on; it always did. ‘What’s the problem?’

 

Remus cleared his throat again and tightened his hold on Sirius’s hand. ‘We need a larger sample size, I think.’

 

Sirius’s stomach flipped. ‘You want me to kiss you again?’

 

‘It was…’ Remus hesitated. ‘Sirius, I don’t want to hurt you by leading you on. But it was unexpectedly very nice.’

 

Sirius reached out with his other hand and Remus caught it. ‘What do you mean?’

 

‘I didn’t expect to feel anything,’ Remus said. ‘You have stubble, for god’s sake. I figured it would be really weird, but I could say that I had tried it, and had seen that it would never work, and then we could get through that, but then you kissed me, and it did work, kind of, I mean, it felt really, it was really, really nice.’ He stopped, blushed, looked down at his lap, and said, ‘And so I think you should do it again.’

 

Sirius took a deep breath and tried to release his death grip on Remus’s hands. He didn’t succeed. ‘Anything I could do better this time?’ he asked. ‘Any tips? Should I go shave? Brush my teeth?’

 

Remus laughed. ‘No, I think we’d better keep going with these experimental conditions.’ He stopped laughing and looked serious. ‘But I don’t… I don’t know what I’m feeling, right now. I don’t want… to hurt you.’

 

‘Lily and James were so right,’ Sirius blurted.

 

‘How so?’

 

‘They just kept saying how nice you were going to be about everything.’

 

Remus gave him a pained smile. ‘What, was I supposed to kick you out?’

 

‘I don’t know,’ Sirius said. He bit his lip. ‘I mean, I think there are plenty of people who would be quite dismayed to find out that their flatmate was… interested in them. Their flatmate of the same sex, that is.’

 

‘It would be a bit hypocritical to be upset with you for being different. Especially for being different in a way you can’t control.’ Remus smiled more genuinely. ‘Hell, you spent three years becoming an Animagus when you found out that I was different. The least I can do is devote an evening to seeing if I like kissing you.’ He patted the edge of the bed and took a deep breath. ‘Now, come sit next to me,’ he said, ‘and let’s find out.’

 

Sirius was suddenly so nervous that he genuinely thought for a second that he might vomit all over Remus’s shoes. He moved to sit beside Remus and they looked at each other for a long moment, both of them solemn, before he leaned in and Remus moved to meet him. One of each of their hands remained joined between them; with his free hand, Sirius reached up and stroked Remus’s jawline. Remus’s mouth was hot and wet and tasted vaguely of tea and when, after they’d been kissing gently for a few minutes, he brought his own free hand up and stroked the hair behind Sirius’s ear, Sirius found himself shaking like he was fourteen.

 

‘I’m sorry,’ he said thickly, and Remus asked, against his mouth, ‘For what?’ and Sirius thought, _Well, might as well kiss like I’m fourteen too_ , and he opened his mouth. Remus responded, maybe even enthusiastically. Sirius moved his hand down from Remus’s jawline to his neck and then his pronounced collarbone, stroking along the taut lines of his skin. Remus stroked his hair and then moved his hand around to cup Sirius’s head, and _fuck_ he was pulling him closer, _fuck_ he was doing things to Sirius’s insides that he had previously only read about in books and suddenly found himself experiencing and it was overwhelming and amazing and _fuck._ Remus disconnected their linked hands and put that hand down on Sirius’s thigh, where it was hot and sweaty through his trousers and in the exact position most likely to make Sirius think about sex, which he suddenly was, sex was all he could think of, throbbing and hardness and Remus and _fuck_. He wrapped his arms around Remus and leaned back, and after a second of hesitation, Remus followed him down, so that Sirius’s head and chest were lying back on the bed and Remus was over him, and they were still kissing, and Sirius still couldn’t seem to stop shaking. Remus drew back and smoothed Sirius’s hair, gently, with one hand while propping himself up with the other.  

 

‘Are you ok?’ he whispered, and Sirius whispered back, feeling somehow that the only important sounds in this quiet room were their quick breaths and the sounds their bodies made when pressed together, ‘Ok’s not really the word,’ and Remus kissed him again, kissed him hard enough to push him back against the pillow. Sirius reached out and took away Remus’s hand from the bed and crushed it to his chest, so that Remus’s weight came down on him.

 

‘I’ve got to take my shoes off,’ Remus said. ‘They’re all wet.’

 

‘Oh, but,’ Sirius said, frantic to hold onto him, but Remus had already pulled away and sat up. Sirius lay against the pillow, feeling like a troll was sat upon his chest, holding him down and making his breathing short and shaky. Then he felt Remus’s hands on his ankles, on his shoes, undoing the laces and lifting and tugging.

 

‘You took mine off after the cricket,’ Remus murmured.

 

‘Oh,’ Sirius breathed, ‘I figured you were too drunk to notice.’

 

Remus snorted. ‘Give me some credit.’

 

‘It’s tough for me to give you credit when you had to be physically supported by me for a two hour tube journey.’ Sirius’s hands reached out to Remus, who leaned down into them willingly. ‘Not that I cared, too much,’ Sirius added, as Remus climbed fully onto the bed and he swung his own legs up.

 

‘I think you liked it,’ Remus said, and then he lay down beside Sirius and Sirius turned his head to face him, and Remus wrapped an arm around Sirius’s waist and Sirius put his hands wherever he could and they tangled their legs together. Remus put a hand on Sirius’s face and Sirius leaned in and kissed him again, learning the curves and heat of his mouth with his tongue. The room grew darker as the summer night faded away, and in the shadows Sirius slid his hands down to touch and then grip Remus’s hip. Remus took a deep breath and let Sirius tug him up onto his body, so that they were pressed toe to toe, knee to knee, hip to hip, chest to chest. Remus caught Sirius’s other hand in his and stretched them out above their heads and they looked into each other’s eyes for what felt to Sirius an eternity, searching, before he stretched up with his hips and, taking a deep breath, pressed the hardness of his constrained erection against Remus’s body.

 

Remus inhaled sharply and whispered, ‘Now I know what it must feel like to be a girl at the Yule Ball.’

 

Sirius giggled, absurdly, and then Remus pressed down against him and Sirius gasped, ‘I would have given a lot to have felt _that_ at the Yule Ball!’ He slid his hand down between them and Remus lifted his hips slightly to let Sirius get a hand down his trousers. Remus was breathing hard, and as Sirius found his goal – shocking, really, since he was so turned on he could barely blink, let alone process sensory input – Remus made a little noise, sucked in a sharp gasp, and pushed his head down into the junction of Sirius’s neck and shoulder.

 

Sirius wrapped his fingers very clumsily around Remus’s cock, but the position was terrible and no matter what he tried he found his hand trapped and barely able to move. Remus was breathing, hot and heavy into his neck, kissing and sucking at his skin in a distracted manner, and Sirius couldn’t believe how amazing it was to be able to touch someone else’s cock, to be able to touch _Remus_ ’s cock, and couldn’t believe that Remus was letting him, and he was unbelievably frustrated because he could not get his hand into a position to do anything with that cock. Unconsciously, he whined in frustration.  

 

‘What?’ Remus gasped.

 

‘Fuck, Moony, I just… I don’t want to… ruin the mood – but could you – I just can’t –‘

 

Remus arched his hips up and said, ‘Can you get the buttons?’

 

‘On your trousers?’ Sirius asked, incredulous. He could not believe his good fortune. Maybe he was some kind of sexual god who could do no wrong. Then again, based on his inexpert fumbling, Remus probably just wanted him to unbutton the trousers so he’d stop mangling his manhood.

 

‘Where else?’

 

‘I just thought you wouldn’t want me to, I don’t know, go that far.’

 

Remus pushed himself up abruptly and planted both hands on either side of Sirius’s head. ‘Hey, Sirius.’ Sirius tried to pull him back down, terrified that he’d just messed everything up, and right now, too, when they’d gotten to the sexy parts, but Remus persisted. ‘Sirius. Hey! Listen to me!’

 

Sirius focused on his face. Remus looked serious. That was never good. He was going to start overthinking this thing in three… two…

 

‘I think,’ Remus started, and Sirius arched his back and groaned.

 

‘Do you really have to think _just now_?’

 

‘Yes,’ Remus said, ‘I do. Because I think that you think I’m going to wake up from some spell and think, well fuck this isn’t a beautiful woman in my bed, it’s actually a _man_ , and stop the… proceedings.’ Sirius sighed and Remus raised his eyebrows. ‘Am I right?’

 

‘Yes,’ Sirius muttered. ‘As per usual.’

 

‘Oh dear,’ Remus said, mockingly pressing a hand to Sirius’s forehead, ‘are you feeling all right? Admitting that I’m correct the vast majority of the time?’

 

‘I’m having so many emotions right now,’ Sirius snapped. ‘On the one hand I hate you, but on the other…’

 

‘You don’t seem to hate me,’ Remus said, and actually had the gall to nudge him with his hips and very hard cock. Sirius made an involuntary sound and Remus said, ‘I really should not be enjoying this so much.’

 

‘I think people generally do enjoy having their cocks touched,’ Sirius managed.

 

‘Mmm,’ Remus hummed, and this time he definitely ground down. ‘That part is delightful, but I actually meant observing you.’

 

‘What?’ Sirius demanded. ‘I’m not some… some…’

 

Remus bent down and kissed him gently. ‘I meant seeing you lose your cool.’

 

Somewhere through his haze of arousal, Sirius’s curiosity was genuinely piqued. ‘What?’

 

‘I like seeing this side of you,’ Remus said. ‘The façade is gone. It’s just raw Padfoot.’ He kissed Sirius in between words, little nips on his mouth. ‘It’s like the time I caught you with all the cookery knowledge, or that day in the museum when you were panicked about your job interview.’

 

Sirius wanted to melt so he could fill in all the spaces between the bed and Remus’s body. He bit his lip, collected himself, and said, ‘Tell me now, if I should somehow be lucky enough to do this with you on a regular basis, am I always going to have to come up with conversation in the throes of passion? My brain does not have a lot of blood left in it.’

 

Remus laughed and said, ‘Witty repartee is a must for getting me into bed, although I’ll be honest, I’m struggling to come up with a joke about penis size and quantities of blood.’ He stroked the fingers of one hand through Sirius’s hair and said, ‘But listen, Sirius.’ He paused, and smiled slightly. ‘I think that you think I’m going to suddenly realise that, gasp, shock, horror, I’ve been trying to swallow the tongue of a _man_ for the last several hours, and then I’m going to stop all this and say, sorry, I’ve got to seek out some breasts to reassure myself about my sexuality.’

 

Sirius took a deep breath. ‘Are you going to think that?’

 

‘No,’ Remus said.

 

‘Why not?’

 

‘I could give you a long answer,’ Remus said thoughtfully, ‘about how people think of and construct their identities, and my perspective as someone whose identity doesn’t quite match up, and how subsequently constricting I find most identities to be – but,’ and here he smiled ruefully, ‘I doubt you’d appreciate hearing my supporting arguments just now, so I’ll just say – well, I’ll just say that I’m not worried about my perception of myself changing depending on whom I’m snogging.’

 

‘God, you’re so clever,’ Sirius said. ‘It’s really sexy. Can I take off your trousers?’

 

Remus ducked his head, laughed, and said, ‘Is that your best pick up line?’

 

‘Unlike you,’ Sirius growled, ‘oh master of your identity, it’s really fucking life changing for me to be doing this right now, and so I think it’s pretty rough of you to expect something better.’

 

Remus stilled, and his entire face narrowed with intensity. ‘Don’t for a second think that this isn’t life changing for me too,’ he said. ‘All I was saying was that I’m not going to stop it out of some misguided fears about my masculinity.’ He kissed Sirius hard, and Sirius pushed up against him, but Remus pushed him back, leaning his entire weight on Sirius’s body, until their legs were tangled and their cocks were hard again after the lull for conversation – Sirius’s now achingly so – and grinding against each other through too-tight trousers, and they were panting like they’d been sprinting to catch the last tube train home.

 

‘Now take my fucking trousers off,’ Remus commanded him, and Sirius’s shaking hands couldn’t move fast enough, the buttons wouldn’t part no matter how he tugged, and then they suddenly gave way and Remus wriggled atop him while Sirius managed to get his trousers open and pushed halfway down over the curve of his ass so that he could get a hand into the front of his briefs and tug out his cock. Remus moaned and got his hands between them, opening Sirius’s trousers and running his hand up and down in hard, stuttering movements along his shaft before circling the head of his cock with his thumb and pressing into the base, drawing a figure eight with his fingernail. Sirius whined and writhed beneath him, and Remus whispered, ‘Oh, is that right? Is that how you want me to touch you?’ but Sirius was beyond words and merely pressed Remus’s cock against his own and then wrapped his hand around them both and worked it up and down. Remus whined, low in the back of his throat, and slumped forward to bury his face in Sirius’s neck, one hand shoved up under Sirius’s shirt and twisting his right nipple until Sirius wanted to scream and explode and push and –

 

‘I’m not –‘ he started, and Remus breathed into his ear, ‘You’re going to make me come,’ and that was all he needed to hear, he was coming everywhere, his hand suddenly so slick, and he felt Remus pulsing in his grip, Remus’s hands were both under his shirt and squeezing his shoulders so tightly that he was sure he’d have bruises in the morning. Then Remus collapsed completely atop him and his hand was trapped between them and there seemed to be warm stickiness everywhere. He lay there stunned for he-didn’t-know-how-long before he registered just how much warm stickiness there seemed to be. Then he could feel hysteria welling up inside of him and he started to shake uncontrollably with suppressed giggling.

 

‘What?’ Remus murmured from somewhere in the region of his right ear.

 

‘God, I’m sorry, things are just… really really sticky down here.’ Remus laughed against his shoulder and he said, ‘Oh Moony.’

 

‘I blame you entirely,’ Remus said, his voice several octaves lower than normal, and the pressure in Sirius’s chest increased exponentially. He managed to remove his hand, wiped it on his shirt, which was a disaster zone anyway, and then wrapped his arms around Remus and pulled him as close as he could.

 

He would have stayed that way forever, but after a few minutes Remus pulled away from him and looked down at the mess of their clothes and took out his wand to clean them up. Then he stood and, tucking in his shirt, said, ‘Let me find you some pyjamas.’

 

‘Ok,’ Sirius said. Remus tossed him some striped pyjamas and disappeared out of the door holding his toothbrush and a bundle of clothing. Sirius tried to put himself back together well enough to stand and eventually settled for fully wriggling out of his trousers and pulling on the pyjama bottoms.

 

Remus returned, toothbrush in his mouth, and said, ‘Ennyfing elf I can getchoo?’

 

Sirius shook his head. He felt heavy, far too heavy to get out of the bed. Remus disappeared again and reappeared a few minutes later wearing a dressing gown tightly tied shut. He smiled at Sirius and climbed over him to lie down on the bed. It was narrow and cramped, but Remus lay with his back to the wall and there was a clear space between their bodies. Sirius took a deep breath, ready to speak, and Remus said, ‘That was fun.’

 

‘Yeah,’ Sirius said. He paused and then, because the stilted silence in the room seemed to call for it, ‘I’m glad to hear you say that.’

 

‘Mm,’ Remus replied. Sirius turned his head to look at Remus’s face and saw that his eyes were closed and his lips pressed into a narrow line.

 

‘Are you all right?’ Sirius asked softly.

 

Remus’s eyes flew open and he said, ‘Oh, yes. Just thinking.’

 

‘About what?’

 

Remus gave him an incredulous look. ‘Are you taking the piss? What on earth do you think I’m thinking about?’

 

Sirius sighed and looked up at the ceiling. ‘If you’ve made a huge mistake, I suppose.’

 

‘Oh, Padfoot, you really are very dramatic sometimes,’ Remus huffed. ‘I just told you I had fun. I’m thinking about…’ He stopped and Sirius rolled on his side and reached out to touch him. Remus shook his head and Sirius let his hand fall awkwardly to the bed between them, feeling sick. ‘I just need to think,’ Remus said. He took a deep breath and patted Sirius’s hand before curling into a ball and shutting his eyes. ‘Let’s sleep on it.’

 

‘Remus…’

 

‘What?’ Remus asked, eyes firmly shut.

 

‘Did I ruin our friendship?’

 

Remus laughed softly. ‘This is probably not even in the top five of things you have done even in the past year _alone_ that could have ruined our friendship, you know.’

 

‘What else…’

 

‘Shh,’ Remus said. ‘It’s so late. Let’s just go to sleep.’

 

But when Sirius looked back over at him, a sleepless hour later, his mouth was still pressed into its thin line, his eyes shut too tight. 


	11. Chapter 11

Sirius woke up in a strange, small room. He was cramped and his pyjamas – which felt strange and too small and too tight and too – too everything – were stuck to his body with sweat. For some reason his left arm was entirely dead, not even tingling, and his left leg was unbearably hot. For a long moment, he had no idea what was going on, so he gingerly probed around inside his head for the first signs of a hangover. None present. Maybe he was still drunk. He opened his eyes and simultaneously realised where he was and _what it meant_.

 

Remus was deeply asleep beside and on top of him, deadening his arm and generating heat like an overactive radiator. His every breath made a little whistling sound and puffed hot, sticky air onto Sirius’s collarbone. This sleeping position had happened sometime in the night; Sirius remembered now how they’d fallen asleep, carefully stretched out on the tiny bed so that they weren’t touching, Sirius wearing Remus’s pyjamas while Remus slept in a full dressing gown, their clothes like a Victorian chaperone lying between them. Now Remus’s dressing gown had fallen open and his pale stomach was exposed to the air, a line of dark hair trailing down to the hem of his…

 

Sirius’s cock responded to that thought with vigorous enthusiasm. He tried to edge away from Remus, mortally embarrassed, but his own body ignored him, pitching what he was certain was the most gleefully spiteful tent in its long and storied history of embarrassing erections.  

 

Remus slept on, completely oblivious.

 

Sirius waited a while, trying silently to talk down his traitorous cock. Remus made a tiny huffing sound and moved his arm, the arm that Sirius had previously been unaware of but that he now realised was pressed none-too-gently into his lower rib cage. Sirius tried to decide if the action was hostile while his cock tried to decide if the hand was coming onto him.

 

 _This is so fucked_ , Sirius thought. He was desperately trying not to think about last night. He thought that it must be quite early – the light outside had an early-dawn look to it, and this being late July that probably meant it was near five – and they had gone to bed only a few hours ago. Sirius didn’t realise it, but he must have drifted back to sleep, because at some point Remus rolled onto his other side, so that he was only crushing Sirius’s hand and not his entire arm. Sirius’s erection subsided, returned, subsided like a tidal river, like the Thames in London, like the walls of a fort over the centuries... Once the sun started shining through the window, he woke fully, from a fitful, half-waking dream of sweet kisses.

 

So. Last night had happened. Sirius felt like the pyjamas were the ultimate symbol of that: in essence, Remus had said, here’s my boundary, you can even borrow my pyjamas, but we’re not going to be cuddling each other to sleep.

 

And then he bloody well fell asleep like he owned the bed (which he sort of did, but…) and lay all over Sirius and made Sirius unbearably horny. He also did things to Sirius that were less immediate but infinitely more painful: he made him ache somewhere deep inside of his body, a place so deep that Sirius was certain that no healer could find it to make it better. Sirius decided that, while Remus might be unsure, might have deep misgivings, he, Sirius, had the opposite. He was absolutely certain that Remus was the one for him. He didn’t care if he ever cupped a breast again – or, for that matter, if he ever touched any cock that wasn’t Remus’s. He had to convince Remus somehow. With a vague thought that Remus would be more sympathetic on a full stomach, Sirius rolled out of bed as quietly as possible, went into the kitchen, and started making tea and eggs.

 

A few minutes passed, while Sirius desperately did not think about last night. He counted to thirty for the tea bag to steep. He measured the milk in an extra cup specifically so he could have the distracting pleasure of washing the cup. He cracked the egg with military precision and set it into the pan only after the oil had been heated to a perfect temperature. He sprinkled the egg with just the right amount of pepper.

 

‘Whose eggs are those?’

 

Sirius jumped and looked up. A tousled Remus, his hair standing on end and his dressing gown belted tightly around his waist, had appeared in the doorway. He was almost unbearably sexy. Sirius’s stomach decided that it fancied a trip to his toes, via roller coaster. His cock waved vaguely as it passed by, but luckily got caught up in the tailwind of anxiety trailing behind his stomach and collapsed.

 

‘Uhm, I thought they were yours,’ Sirius said.

 

Remus shook his head. ‘Nope. I’ve been eating in hall.’

 

‘Oh.’ Sirius looked back at the egg, now happily frying away in the pan. ‘Too late.’

 

‘Indeed,’ Remus said. He yawned and stretched. His dressing gown slid open and he cinched it shut again. ‘Sleep well?’

 

‘Oh,’ Sirius said, ‘you know.’

 

‘Hopefully not too cramped,’ Remus said. Sirius felt certain that if he looked up ‘good mood’ in the dictionary (which made no sense, but Sirius was going to follow it through), he would see a picture of Remus as he was right now. Sirius wanted to say, ‘I’m an emotional wreck,’ meaning that he was like one of those old sailing ships, lost at sea, masts blown away by cannon and hurricane, drifting towards the coral shores of a previously hidden and unknown kingdom described only by ancient geographers as SO MANY DRAGONS MADE OF EMOTION HERE DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT LAND. Sirius wanted to say, ‘Please love me as much as I love you.’ He wanted to say, ‘I can’t bear this.’ He studied the pan, the spatula, the ring of old grease around the edge of the hob.

 

‘Oh, Sirius,’ Remus said. Sirius glanced back at him; he was smiling, but Sirius thought that it maybe looked a little forlorn. ‘It’s tough to fit in this tiny kitchen with all these trolls we’re trying to ignore.’

 

Sirius swallowed. ‘And how are you… feeling… in the light of day?’

 

‘Surprisingly well rested,’ Remus said. ‘You’re a fantastic pillow.’ Sirius stared at him and Remus smiled wider. ‘Or was that not what you were asking?’

 

Sirius slid the spatula underneath the egg, waited a beat. His throat was too constricted to talk; he swallowed around it and stared very hard down at little bubbles flecked with pepper forming around the edges of the egg white. When he spoke, his voice sounded gravelly and strange. ‘You have no idea how wonderful you are.’

 

There was a long silence. Sirius flipped the egg, counted to ten, then scooped it out of the pan and onto the toast. He chanced a look back at Remus. He was standing in the doorway, looking directly at Sirius. The smile was gone. Remus’s face was serious and his eyes looked raw and young and definitely scared. He was holding the doorframe with both hands.

 

‘Maybe it would be good for me,’ he said finally, ‘if I had someone to tell me that. More, you know, regularly.’

 

 _If this was a film,_ Sirius thought, _that would be my cue. I would cross these shitty student-let tiles between us and I would sweep him up in my arms and we would kiss and kiss and kiss._ But. Remus still looked scared, so very scared, and Sirius was scared himself. He didn’t want to startle the wolf he’d just caught a glimpse of in these dark woods. His heartbeat felt like it was vibrating his entire chest. He put the spatula down on the counter and said, ‘I could be the one to do that.’

 

Remus’s hands tightened on the doorframe; Sirius could see the whites of the tendons at his knuckles. ‘It would be harder than that, Sirius.’ Remus took a deep breath. ‘For one thing, I think I’m probably quite a difficult person to… well, to be with.’

 

‘You think I’d be easy?’ Sirius asked. ‘Christ, you know what a mess I am better than probably anyone.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But Remus, I want to be the one to tell you. And I would, too. Tell you. All the time. That you’re wonderful. I’d tell you when you wanted to hear it and when you didn’t and all the other times too.’ His hands were shaking and he felt absurd holding onto the plate. He set it down beside the spatula and put his hands on the edge of the counter. They tingled.

 

Remus released his death grip on the doorframe and moved towards Sirius, but veered his course to starboard at the last minute. He picked up an open package of bourbons and plucked one out of the wrapper. Sirius marvelled at how fastidious Remus was when he was eating, the way that he swept the crumbs off the counter and the way that he licked the tips of his fingers after every bite.

 

‘You should stop that,’ he said after Remus had eaten two bourbons in rapid succession. ‘You’ll spoil your breakfast.’

 

Remus put the bourbons down with infinite care. ‘I didn’t know that was for me,’ he said, indicating the egg. ‘You only made one.’

 

‘It’s for you,’ Sirius said. His voice was hoarse again. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to imbue the egg with meaning or not. It seemed like a stupid thing to do, to make a stupid fried egg symbolic, but he wanted Remus to know: everything he did was for him.

 

Remus plucked two forks out of the drying rack and said, ‘Here, let’s share,’ and Sirius didn’t know if that had a double meaning either, but it seemed like it might do. Remus cut off a piece of egg and toast with the edge of the fork and offered it to Sirius. ‘A bite for you,’ he said softly. Sirius leaned in and, at the last minute, bypassed the fork and egg and kissed Remus on the mouth. Remus sighed a little bit, like he was pleasantly not-very-surprised, and Sirius leaned in until Remus was pressed back against the wall. Remus’s other hand – the one not holding a forkful of egg that was hovering somewhere near Sirius’s left ear – slid down and landed on Sirius’s waist, where his fingers slipped under his t-shirt and made Sirius shiver and press in closer. Sirius thought that he would never, ever get tired of this, even if someday these kisses became routine, he would never stop loving this, it would always be amazing…

 

‘Sirius, mmh, Sirius, mm, Sirius!’ Remus was trying to say something but was also pressing little biting kisses to the corners of Sirius’s mouth. ‘Sirius!’

 

‘What?’ Sirius asked. He drew back enough to rub their noses together. He felt like he was floating just as many inches above the ground as was required to never have to touch it again.

 

Remus shyly touched his nose to Sirius’s and rubbed back, dropped his eyes, and then leaned in for another kiss before suddenly drawing back and saying, ‘Sirius!’

 

‘What?’ Sirius repeated. He wasn’t listening at all, so he tried to pitch his question so that it could either be a query or a request for repetition.

 

‘This is really nice,’ Remus said, ‘but could I just put down the egg?’

 

‘Oh,’ Sirius said. ‘Right.’ They did an awkward little dance where Sirius had to step back and Remus had to lean their bodies together while he searched around for the plate, which had gotten pushed onto the hob. Sirius put his hands on Remus’s sides and stroked. Remus’s arm wobbled and the egg fell. Then there was an acrid burning smell and Sirius saw comprehension dawn on Remus’s face a second before the fire alarm started to wail.

 

 

They stood out on the quad shivering in the shadows cast by the ornate church tower that formed the central wall of the college, surrounded by approximately one trillion dark-robed fellows of the college in various stages of hangover and a few stray students who were in college over the long vacation. Remus was still wearing the dressing gown over his briefs and Sirius was now acutely aware that he was wearing Remus’s pyjamas. He never wanted to take them off (unless Remus took them off for him). Fellows of the college kept coming by to say hello to Remus, and Sirius kept introducing himself as ‘Just a friend, down from London for the weekend,’ which made absolutely no sense when he thought about it since Remus lived in London now and had himself come down for the weekend, but seemed to be better than whatever Remus might have said about him: ‘This strange man who I have known since childhood lost his mind and followed me out here, then forced me to pity him so much that I let him into my tiny, college-issued bed, and then he made me a terrible rubbery egg, an egg so terrible that I would rather have kissed him some more than eat it, and then it lit my kitchen on fire, resulting in the subsequent evacuation of the entire college onto this quad, where we are all now cold, headachy, and miserable.’ After Sirius’s third bizarre babbling introduction, Remus silenced him with a hand on the arm and merely introduced him as an ‘old friend’. The fellows seemed to take that as pure innuendo, with much wink-wink-nudge-nudge and compliments about his taste in ‘friends’. 

‘You should probably know there are quite a few gay fellows,’ Remus said. He stood with his arms crossed, perfectly serene. Sirius wanted to scream, ‘We were just snogging in the kitchen!’ but Remus was likely already aware of that miraculous fact, so he tried to hold it in. Periodically a little squeak or whimper escaped him, but Remus seemed to have achieved a zen state of not-talking-about-things, so Sirius stood by his side and tried not to dance from nerves and cold. When they were let back inside, after a stern talking-to from the porter, Remus took him back to his little bedsit and said very calmly, ‘I have to go to the library today. I can’t waste a working day.’

Sirius was absolutely floored. ‘Well I’ll wait here, I guess,’ he volunteered, as if Moony wasn’t about to put off what was certainly going to be the most important conversation of his entire life. Then Sirius realised that maybe, to Moony, this conversation wasn’t actually that important. His brain settled onto the remark about the fellows and he started to wonder what exactly Moony had gotten up to when he was an Oxford student. His imagination leapt out in full force, and was parading images of Remus _in flagrante delicto_ with all variety of Oxford don (and was that the porter?!) by the time Remus put his hands on Sirius’s shoulders and said, ‘Padfoot. Listen to me.’

 

Sirius looked up, blinking away all terrible imagery, and into Remus’s very nice eyes. Remus’s touch on his shoulders was so gentle as to be insubstantial, and when Sirius reached for one of his hands, it slipped away to fall at Remus’s side. ‘Listen,’ Remus said again. ‘I have four more days here, Sirius. I need to take all the time I can to work in the archive. I can’t just waste those days because of, well, because of a personal crisis.’ Remus smiled, and his smile was so sweet that Sirius had a hard time reconciling it with the words coming out of his mouth. ‘Padfoot, we’ll talk about this when I come back to London.’

 

Sirius felt the back of his throat tighten and he dropped his head so he didn’t have to look at Remus. ‘I want to talk about it now,’ he managed to say, and then he got kind of choked up, so that not only was he mortally embarrassing, but he sounded like a petulant child too. He heard Remus inhale, and then he felt the bed sag as Remus sat beside him. Remus’s arm came around his shoulders and then Remus’s strong arms pulled him down into his lap. Sirius put his face onto Remus’s thigh and snuffled miserably. He remembered Remus saying, almost exactly a year ago, that he wanted to help him out by letting his spare room. That was the start of this, of all this: that simple kindness. Sirius had been drowning: in his own stupid decisions, his terrible loneliness that had haunted him like a ghoul and was perpetually on the edge of the shadows, ready to come out and play. ‘Moony,’ he started to say, and then he stopped. He didn’t know what else there was to say besides this: he was hurt enough to be practically crying into Remus’s thigh. Didn’t that speak volumes of dire, unsubtle poetry in itself?

 

‘Oh Padfoot,’ Remus said. He sighed audibly. His fingers were in Sirius’s hair, stroking, stroking. ‘I just don’t understand. We’ve known each other for so long.’ He paused. ‘I mean, I understand the… the sex thing. That makes sense. It’s fun, it’s easy. But the part where you’re… in love with me?’

 

Sirius twisted his head so he was staring at Remus’s belt. Remus’s… well, you know, was also somewhere nearby but Sirius was ignoring it right now in favour of his perfect stomach. ‘If you think,’ he said, sniffling, ‘that this is the kind of story that starts with an eleven year old schoolboy falling in love at first sight…’

 

Remus laughed, a tiny huff of breath. Sirius could almost feel his smile radiating. ‘I suppose that is a pretty absurd idea,’ Remus said. ‘Particularly remembering you as an eleven year old. I think I rated somewhere below that absurd broom your mother bought for you. But why should twenty-one year old you feel any different?’

 

‘I don’t know,’ Sirius said. ‘Brooms lost their charm. I guess I grew up.’

 

‘Oh, Padfoot,’ Remus said. He sighed and Sirius sat up, sensing that he’d either said the exact right or exact wrong thing – but when he looked at Remus, he couldn’t read anything in his face. Remus stood up and smoothed down his trouser legs, then said, ‘Look, I’ve got to do this research. The library is only open so many hours. I’m sorry. Stay if you want. We can talk more later tonight.’

 

Sirius nodded and wiped furiously at his eyes. Maybe not entirely the wrong thing, then. Frantic, he reached out a hand. ‘Moony…’

 

 

‘Please,’ Remus said. ‘Give me time to think.’ He picked up his bag, darted in, kissed Sirius on the corner of the mouth, and then spun away, mumbling, ‘I’ll see you this evening!’ as he left. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another chapter with the explicit sexytimes. If that's not your jam, please don't read. Otherwise, enjoy!

Sirius was napping when he heard a bang. He woke up with a start, and then something heavy landed on top of him and that gave him a double start. He thrashed around under the blankets before struggling to the surface. Remus was standing over him, hands on his hips, and there was an enormous book on his chest.

 

‘You’re not very good for my research, you know,’ Remus announced. ‘I just spent the last two hours in the library staring blankly at a wall.’

 

Sirius smiled shyly. ‘It was in Oxford, so it was probably a nice wall,’ he reasoned. ‘It probably had six ornamental bosses and some gilt.’

 

‘Even Queen Elizabeth’s seal gets old to look at if you stare at it long enough.’ Remus put down his bag and sighed. ‘Let’s go out.’ He looked down at Sirius, who couldn’t help smiling and gazing dopily back. ‘Sirius, Padfoot, seriously, get the fuck up and let’s go out. You’re killing me.’

 

‘Why?’

 

Remus glared. ‘I can’t stop thinking about you. Or about last night.’

 

‘I’m sorry,’ Sirius said, but he wasn’t. Remus huffed and Sirius reached out to touch him. Remus let him, just for a second, before tugging him to his feet and handing him his coat.

 

‘It’s a lovely day,’ Remus said. ‘You can’t just sit here.’ He was looking at the floor, his hands fluttering around him, and Sirius reached out and caught them.

 

‘What are we going to do?’ he asked. Remus leaned towards him, leaned away. Sirius tugged him closer and Remus let him, this time, and it was the most amazing thing to just lean in and kiss him. Remus squeezed his hands and drew back, a strange and unreadable look on his face.

 

‘We’re going out,’ Remus said. He paused, as if he was about to say something but had thought better of it.

 

‘Go on,’ Sirius prompted.

 

‘We’re going to – just for today – we’re going to pretend that –‘ Remus stopped, obviously gathered his thoughts, started over. ‘We’re going on a date.’

 

Sirius raised an eyebrow. ‘Another experiment?’ he asked quietly. Remus smiled, clearly nervous, and Sirius tugged him close again. Remus’s arms came up under his and his hands wrapped around his shoulder blades. Sirius put his hands on Remus’s waist and ducked his head as Remus buried his nose into Sirius’s neck.

 

‘I really mean it, Padfoot,’ Remus mumbled into his neck. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’ His hold tightened around Sirius’s shoulders and Sirius tugged him closer, lining up their hips, wanting to hold him so close. ‘I’m just going with… what I’m feeling.’

 

‘I think you’re doing wonderfully,’ Sirius said. ‘I’m just going with what I’m feeling too.’

 

Remus laughed against his neck. ‘You seem to have a much better idea of what that is than I do.’ He paused and then said in a rush, ‘Because the sex part was really fun, and I could easily see myself enjoying that, but, and stop me if I’m wrong, but I think that you’re interested in more than the sex.’

 

Sirius hesitated. He didn’t want to say he was, because Remus had just said that he liked that – and if that was all Sirius could have –

 

‘And don’t just say that’s fine with you,’ Remus said, taking a deep breath, and Sirius realised that he was hearing a prepared speech, or at least something that Remus had thought about a lot this morning, ‘because I think we’re both old enough to acknowledge that that’s just not true. You want more from me.’

 

Sirius hesitated again, and then nodded, his head moving against Remus’s.

 

‘You want a… relationship. A partnership. Like Peter and Emmeline, like Lily and James.’

 

Sirius nodded again, not trusting himself to speak.

 

‘So that’s why I want us to… to go out, on a date, to see if there’s a… romantic element to it. Instead of just a sex element.’ He sighed and Sirius could feel his chest move against his own. ‘I’m sorry. I just need to feel this out.’ He sighed again. ‘I mean, Jesus, Padfoot, it’s tough to think about romance and, you know, the Marauders. I mean, think about the things I’ve seen you do.’

 

Sirius instantly regretted a good three quarters of his misspent youth. ‘You know Lily didn’t much like James back then either, and look how they are now,’ he said feebly.

 

Remus laughed into his hair. ‘Lily didn’t see most of the things I did,’ he said, ‘but yes, that’s a pretty good argument. And the further we get from the whole four smelly boys, one small space paradigm, the more innocent and fantastic and… and detached from our current reality it seems.’ He paused. ‘So that’s why this is under consideration.’

 

‘Take your time,’ Sirius murmured, turning his head to smell Remus’s hair. They stood like that, Sirius breathing in Remus’s scent and Remus clutching onto him, for a long moment. ‘You smell wonderful, you know,’ Sirius said, and Remus leaned back, breaking the embrace, and said, ‘You smell like a dog, you know.’

 

‘Didn’t bother you last night,’ Sirius blurted, and then he ducked his head in mortification.

 

But all was well, because after a beat, Remus laughed and said, ‘I deserved that, I think.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘One other thing, Sirius…’

 

‘What’s that?’ Sirius asked.

 

Remus didn’t say anything for a moment; he had a troubled look, his lips together tight and a crease between his eyebrows. Finally, he said in a rush, ‘Are you sure you’d want to be with a werewolf?’

 

Sirius laughed, startled. ‘Is that troubling you?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

Sirius instantly regretted the laugh. He opened his mouth, trying to think of a way to express what he was thinking, struggling for the right words. ‘Honestly, I didn’t even think of it,’ he said finally. ‘It’s, I mean, it’s a part of you, Moony. Right? It’s a part of you I’ve known about for almost the entire time we’ve known each other. And so when I think of you, it’s just a fact about you. Like knowing that you have, I don’t know, brown eyes, or something like that.’

 

‘If my eyes wouldn’t hesitate to murder you once a month,’ Remus said quietly.

 

‘Now who’s dramatic?’ Sirius asked, smiling, trying to keep the moment light. ‘Anyway, you’d never try to murder Padfoot.’ Remus looked at him, all big eyes, and Sirius couldn’t help but be reminded of the canine traits that they shared. Particularly the one that involved begging at the table. ‘Honestly, Remus, it’s just the same as,’ and here he tried to phrase it as neutrally as possible, ‘anyone who might fancy me having to pause and think about everything that goes along with the Black family.’

 

Remus reached out and took Sirius’s hand. ‘Well,’ he said, gaze averted to where their fingers interlaced, ‘I think, well, I appreciate you saying that.’ He smiled and looked up. ‘I’ve never held hands with someone whose hands were as big as mine. The physicality of this is just… really quite fascinating.'

 

‘Add it to your analysis chapter,’ Sirius said. ‘Though I’m more interested in your conclusions.’

 

Remus raised an eyebrow. ‘Did you just make a joke about the structure of my PhD? Because I hope you realise that my conclusions will all be preliminary and call for more funding and study.’

 

‘Where better to share some witty academic banter than in romantic Oxford?’ Sirius asked. His heart was fluttering in his chest.

 

‘Yes, Oxford, a very romantic city,’ Remus said. ‘Which until last night, I associated with furious revising and pulling all-nighters under miserable fluorescent lights.’

 

‘What do you associate it with now?’

 

‘Still that. But also, you,’ Remus said, shrugging. ‘Blowing up our quiet lives, maybe. Certainly changing them.’ He smiled. ‘Padfoot, this is crazy. We’re going on a date.’

 

‘It doesn’t feel crazy to me,’ Sirius said, truthfully. Somehow, despite all the shared history, despite the times they’d vomited on each other, moaned about girls to each other, skived off classes together, ignored the washing up together, transformed into hairy beasts together – despite everything, this felt perfectly right.

 

Remus rolled his eyes. ‘Have you been taking lessons in saying soppy things from James?’ he asked, but he didn’t look annoyed. If anything, Sirius thought, he looked pleased. He made a mental note to keep it up with the romantic comments. He was finding it alarmingly easy to think of them.

 

Remus took out his wand with his free hand and hesitated. ‘Think there’s Death Eaters around?’

 

Sirius shook his head. ‘No clue.’

 

Remus pursed his lips and then raised his wand and cast a glamour around them.

 

‘What’s this?’ Sirius asked.

 

‘Sometimes you want to pass through the world without people staring at what you’re doing,’ Remus said.

 

‘Like what?’

 

Remus darted forward and gave Sirius a kiss on the side of his mouth so fast and electric that it might have been lightning. ‘Like that.’

 

 

 

Holding hands with a man in public, glamour or not, made Sirius feel like the entire world was staring at him. They walked through the magical gate of the college and into the middle of Muggle Oxford. The day had gotten considerably warmer and Sirius could see the shimmer of heat rising off of the hills to the west of the city as they stood on the pavement in High Street. He squeezed Remus’s hand tighter as hordes of shoppers and tourists moved around them. Academics in tweed cycled past at stately paces, pipes dangling out of every other mouth. The crowds were dizzying. Remus navigated them up the street; he seemed to have a destination in mind. They turned up a narrow lane and walked between the honey-stone walls of colleges, suddenly cut off from the bustle of traffic, and then emerged underneath a bridge to another main street.  

 

‘It’s a beautiful city, isn’t it?’ Remus asked. His hand in Sirius’s felt big and strong; where his fingers wrapped around Sirius’s, they were warm.

 

‘Beautiful,’ Sirius echoed. The word vibrated around his mind, chased ahead of them like an excited dog throughout the day, as they bought things for a picnic, wandered out to the vast sunny expanse of Port Meadow, lay in the grass beside the Thames joined at the hand and touching at the shoulder and hip, and listened to the passing of the river and the shouts of punters and rowers and pleasure-boaters. Around noon, conversation having fallen away, Remus turned towards him and took a nap resting against his shoulder. Sirius lay in the sun, suspecting he was getting a dreadful sunburn and not caring a bit. He stroked Remus’s hair gently and listened to him breathe and wished for the moment to last forever.

 

Instead, the sky started to cloud over in the middle of the afternoon. Fearing rain, Sirius woke Remus, who sat up lazily and stretched. ‘I’m sorry for being a boring date,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’ll change your mind when you see the blazing heights of excitement you’d have in store for you with me,’ but Sirius rolled his eyes and squeezed his hand and Remus smiled.

 

‘Do you mind getting a bit wet?’ he asked.

 

‘Depends on why,’ Sirius said. ‘It will take a lot of convincing to get me to swim in the river, if that’s what you’re proposing.’

 

Remus laughed. ‘God, no, though I assume I’d just need to throw a stick in there and you’d dive right in. But I want to show you something, and we might get rained on.’

 

Sirius was ready to follow Remus to the ends of the earth, so walking across a bridge, out of the Meadow, and then up a winding country lane seemed easy. They rounded a corner and Sirius could see a churchyard, shrouded in the boughs of huge trees, and beyond that the pale stone of a small parish church. Remus led them through the gate and they walked through the churchyard hand in hand, between rows of gravestones, until they came around the side of the church and reached a little set of stairs heading down into the ground to a well.

 

‘Who puts a well in a graveyard?’ Sirius asked. ‘Basic public health issue.’

 

‘Indeed,’ Remus says. ‘But, you know, we haven’t always understood disease transmission…’

 

Sirius glanced over at Remus. ‘So you’re showing me a creepy well in a graveyard because…?’

 

Remus rolled his eyes. ‘This “creepy well in a graveyward” is known as St Frideswide’s treacle well. St Frideswide being the Anglo-Saxon nun who founded Oxford. And the treacle well appears in _Alice in Wonderland_.’

 

‘Interesting,’ Sirius said, no idea where this was going.

 

‘I just thought it might be interesting to see,’ Remus said. There was something in his voice that made Sirius turn towards him. Remus had a mischievous look on his face. ‘I feel like I fell down the rabbit hole myself today, you know.’

 

‘How’s that going for you?’ Sirius asked. He longed to reach out and pull Remus close.

 

‘Really...’ Remus hesitated, before smiling. ‘Really wonderfully, actually. And I don’t just mean because I got to take a nap in the sun instead of sitting in a library all day. The pillow I was napping on is turning out to be unexpectedly rather lovely.’

 

‘Unexpectedly?’ Sirius asked, and then he did tug Remus close.

 

Remus kissed him – the first time, Sirius thought giddily, that Remus had initiated a kiss – and then said, ‘Maybe not as unexpectedly as, well, as it should be.’

 

‘What do you mean?’ Sirius asked, content to have Remus leaning against him as they talked. He reached up and stroked Remus’s hair and Remus sighed and leaned into his touch.

 

‘This has been a long time coming, hasn’t it?’ Remus asked. ‘Somewhere along the way, we passed through friendship to flatmates to, well, I don’t know, to… something else. Now I feel like we’re catching up to where we already were.’ He stopped to meet Sirius’s eyes. ‘Of course, I hadn’t noticed it, because I can be a bit dense about, well, about people liking me. In any capacity. But now that you’ve brought it up…’

 

Sirius kissed him shyly in an attempt to say what that meant to him, and Remus kissed him back. Rain started to fall, gently at first, but gathering force quickly. Remus broke away to look up at the sky, which had gotten quite black, and said, ‘Let’s go inside the church and wait this out.’

 

The church had a small wooden door and a narrow entryway. They passed through those and into the dark nave just as rain started to lash against the stained glass windows. Sirius looked around the church interior, holding Remus’s hand tightly, as Remus reached out and lit the candles in a candelabra sitting atop a stand by the baptismal font. The candles threw a warm and flickering light over the empty church. Sirius breathed in deeply, taking in the musty smell of old stone and wood in the damp environment. The church contained a quiet, small kind of beauty.

 

‘Be honest,’ Sirius said, mostly joking, ‘you took me here because you knew it was romantic and it was going to rain and you could get me alone.’

 

Remus raised his eyebrows and said, ‘I hadn’t gotten the impression that it would be difficult for me to get you alone.’ Sirius stuck out his tongue and Remus grinned and said, ‘But I will admit, this was the nearest place I could think of…’

 

Sirius’s forgot his attempt at pouting because he’d suddenly become so turned on that he could barely think in what must have been a record time. He’d contact Guinness later. He shoved Remus against the wooden door and kissed him, hard. Remus said something against his mouth and Sirius felt him fumbling around and a second later the door locked with an audible click. The sound was like a starting gun; Remus’s hands landed on his hips and then moved purposefully down until they were holding his ass, pulling him closer, impossibly close, their bodies squeezed together and a delicious friction between them. Remus’s hands came up to his waist, searching, then slipped under his waistband and into his briefs to cup his naked ass. Sirius shuddered against Remus helplessly, trapped between the rock of his big, strong hands and the hard place of his lean body and not inconsiderable arousal. How had Sirius not known this? How had he lived without it?

 

‘Oh, god, Remus,’ he gasped, trying to slow things down before he wound up making a terrible mess of his trousers.

 

‘Yes?’ Remus asked playfully, and Sirius saw that mischievous look back on Remus’s face. He thought, _I am so far gone they’ll never find me again_ , and then he thought, _Oh, Remus._

 

‘Moony, isn’t this, well, it’s a church, so doesn’t this seem a bit…’

 

Remus frowned. ‘Are you not interested?’ he asked. ‘You seem interested,’ he added, using the hands currently wrapped around his ass to tug him closer.

 

Sirius shuddered again and leaned forward, buried his face in Remus’s hair just at the level of his ear and, sucking on his earlobe, whispered, ‘You know what I mean.’

 

‘Oh,’ Remus gasped, and Sirius thought, _success!_ , ‘I didn’t know you were a religious man.’

 

‘I wouldn’t mind worshipping you a bit,’ Sirius breathed, his lips on the delicate curls of Remus’s ear. He bit down on his soft earlobe and then sucked it into his mouth and felt Remus sinking against him, his hands clenching convulsively inside the back of Sirius’s briefs, and that was it, Sirius was going to come right here if he didn’t take action. He moved down from Remus’s ear to his neck, sucking and biting, running his tongue along that long pale surface, the perfect Adam’s apple bobbing as Remus gasped, down to his collarbone, running in a perfect line except for a little nick where it had been broken, and Sirius paused there for a second, to suck and kiss at that little imperfection, that little piece that made this Remus’s collarbone, not just a generic perfect collarbone, while Remus writhed and he put his hands down and undid Remus’s trousers – much more smoothly this time, he thought but declined to mention, as his mouth was quite busy – and then he slid down the rest of Remus’s body until he was on his knees in front of Remus’s opened fly. Remus was breathing quickly, his hands having moved up Sirius’s body to clench at his shoulders; his hips rolled forward in what seemed a nearly unconscious motion. Sirius swallowed – this felt like it was about to be a big step, and he wanted to bound up to it, over it, with as much success as possible – and then reached forward and extracted Remus’s cock from his briefs.

 

‘Oh Sirius, you don’t have to,’ Remus moaned.

 

‘Do you want me to?’ Sirius asked, voice shaking a little.

 

‘I…’

 

‘Because I want to,’ Sirius admitted.

 

‘Oh Sirius, oh, yes, please,’ Remus said, and that was all Sirius needed to hear, he wrapped his hand around the base of Remus’s cock and then took it in his mouth and ran his tongue around it; it felt big, and so heavy, full of blood as he licked experimentally along a vein and then around the head, and Remus’s hands on his shoulders clenched convulsively and Sirius remembered how women had done this to him, what he’d thought had felt good, and wanted desperately to convey those things to Remus, to give him moments of perfect pleasure, far outside of worry and time and anything but this, the connection of his hot mouth and Remus’s throbbing cock and the taste of pre-come on his tongue as Remus gasped and clutched and said, ‘I want to warn you, I’m going to…’ and Sirius sucked more enthusiastically and Remus came inside his mouth in an explosion of heat and pulsation and taste. Sirius sucked at his cock until Remus had stopped moaning and then gently patted him back inside of his briefs and did up his fly. Remus’s hands on his shoulders shook as he slid down the wall to face him.

 

‘Oh,’ Remus said after a moment. ‘Oh, that was…’

 

‘How was it?’ Sirius asked anxiously.

 

‘Amazing,’ Remus breathed. ‘Come here.’ Pleased, Sirius curled into Remus’s arms and Remus kissed him, open mouthed and passionate. ‘Fuck,’ he said eventually, flopping his head back against the church door. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck fuck fuck.’

 

‘What?’ Sirius asked, trying not to sound too smug. ‘Everything ok?’

 

Remus opened one eye and glared. ‘Well aren’t you the cat that stole the cream.’

 

‘Points for the innuendo,’ Sirius said, unable to stop grinning. ‘But a cat? How insulting.’

 

Remus rolled his eyes. ‘Maybe I can make it up to you somehow.’

 

Sirius stroked his hand down Remus’s chest and nuzzled under his chin. ‘You don’t have to reciprocate right now. Do whatever feels right. If you’re not comfortable with anything…’

 

‘Mm,’ Remus murmured, and Sirius could feel the sound as it rumbled inside of him. He pressed closer, listening for Remus’s heartbeat, his pulse, the miracle that he was alive. Some indeterminate amount of time passed, and then Remus bent down to kiss him. There was definitely purpose behind the kiss. Sirius let Remus gently push him back until he was lying on the cold stone floor, someone’s grave underneath him no doubt, the uneven ends of the stones pushing up into his back, but Remus was kissing him and moving down his body, undoing his trousers and enveloping his cock in the hot wetness of his mouth. Sirius moaned, thrust upwards, grabbed for Remus and made contact with one of his hands – the other being occupied with cupping his balls – and he twined their fingers together and held on, his entire body on fire as Remus swallowed him. And fuck, but Remus was good at this, sucking and humming and stroking, guiding his thrusts with a well-placed hand, and his mouth was perfect, this was better than anything Sirius had ever experienced, and he wanted it to last forever but he could feel the edge of it already. He came abruptly, shuddering, and then lay on the floor as the cold seeped in, sure he’d bruised his entire back and not caring one bit. Remus lapped at his cock and then lay with his head pillowed on Sirius’s thigh, the fingers of his free hand stroking up and down Sirius’s stomach, until Sirius twisted forward and pulled Remus into a tight embrace. Unlike last night, Remus stayed in his arms, nuzzling, until Sirius realised just how cold and sore he actually was and gently let go of him and sat up. Remus sat up with him and tucked in his shirt and did up his buttons, eyes averted, face reddening as his hand brushed over Sirius’s cock inside of his trousers.

 

‘Well, that was fucking amazing,’ Sirius said. ‘I mean… wow, Moony.’

 

Remus gave him an embarrassed smile, now fussing with his own clothing. ‘Thanks. You were too, you know.’

 

‘Yeah, but.’ Sirius reached out and touched Remus’s arm.

 

Remus made eye contact, very briefly. ‘Past lovers have suggested that I might have a bit of an… oral fixation.’ He paused. ‘Those past lovers were all women, though, I should specify. I’d never done that before.’

 

Sirius stared at him, goggle-eyed. _Oral fixation indeed_. Those were words that were going to haunt him for the rest of his life. Haunt him very, very pleasurably. ‘How did this compare?’

 

‘Oh,’ Remus said, still the picture of mortified, ‘well, it didn’t take as long as… Next time maybe I should… regulate my actions more…’

 

Sirius burst into laughter and a second later, Remus joined in, until they were helplessly giggling. Sirius suddenly stopped and said, ‘”Next time?”’

 

Remus looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘Practice makes perfect, Padfoot.’ He stood up, leaving Sirius on the floor and in a kind of erotic shock, and asked, ‘Has the rain stopped? Because we should probably stop defiling the church and go get some dinner or something.’

 

Sirius made an effort to pull himself together. ‘You didn’t seem to mind the defiling the church a little big ago.’

 

‘No,’ Remus agreed, ‘but if we don’t move I’m going to get ideas about defiling it some more, and if it’s not raining than there might be others trying to visit it. Others who will be confused by the locked door and might just go over to the rectory and get the key.’

 

‘Well,’ Sirius said, accepting Remus’s hand and standing, ‘you did say there’d be a next time, so I suppose we can wait a bit.’

 

Remus grinned at him in a way that could only be described as wolfishly. ‘You made a compelling oral argument yourself,’ he said, and opened the door before Sirius could form a retort.

 

The rain had indeed stopped, and the sun had broken through the clouds to shine on all the myriad water droplets on leaf, bough, gravestone… like a new, perfect world had been born…

 

‘And to think of all those years when you accused James of being the worst sort of romantic,’ Remus said, amused, but gentle, an arm wrapped around Sirius’s waist.

 

They walked back to town. There was a carnival on St Giles and Sirius paid seventy pence for them to both ride the Ferris wheel while Remus bought them hot chocolates. They got a seat to themselves and as the wheel spun into the sky, past the ancient stone walls of St John’s College, Remus put an arm around Sirius’s shoulders and tugged him close.

 

‘Thank you,’ he whispered in Sirius’s ear, the words almost lost in the creaking of the gondolas.

 

‘For what?’ Sirius wondered, dazzled by the lights from the carnival below and the feel of Remus warm against him in the cool night air.

 

Remus hesitated and Sirius looked up at him. The wheel spun them higher; they crested the rooftops of the colleges and then they were swinging gently in the sky, the sunset to their left bleeding colours across it. Remus looked out into space but squeezed Sirius’s shoulders and said, ‘Thank you for considering this. Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me.’ He smiled, still looking out at space, and said, ‘It’s been a wonderful day.’

 

‘Who’s soppy now?’ Sirius asked gently. And then there was an extended period where neither could have commented on any view but of each other. Afterwards, they took takeaway back to Remus’s room and sat together on the floor, laughing and talking and holding each other. Long after midnight, Sirius went to brush his teeth, and when he returned, Remus was sound asleep on the bed, so he crawled under the covers beside him and was almost instantly asleep.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short chapter, but it just seemed the most appropriate place for a break in the story.

For the second day in a row, Sirius woke to dawn and Moony drool. He lay in bed for a few seconds, one arm wrapped tightly around Remus, and thought that he had finally found his place in the world – right here, wherever here should be, so long as it was beside this man.

 

Then the bells in the college tower tolled, and Remus sat bolt upright in the bed, looked wildly at Sirius, and gasped, ‘You have to go!’

 

‘What?’

 

‘I woke up at three!’ Remus said, flapping his hands. ‘And I remembered! But you were sleeping so peacefully, and then I feel back to sleep!’

 

Sirius blinked and rubbed at his eyes. ‘Remembered what?’

 

‘Tomorrow – I mean today – it’s Monday!’

 

Sirius almost fell out of the bed in his haste to get up. ‘What time was that ringing?’ he demanded. ‘Fuck fuck fuck,’ he added, starting to tug on his already badly worn clothing. ‘Mondays are early days!’

 

‘I know!’ Remus said, now up as well, digging through the discarded clothing on the floor. ‘You have to go teach about bog bodies!’

 

‘I never did any research!’ Sirius said. ‘And my shirt is a complete disaster!’

 

‘Here!’ Remus threw him one of his own shirts. ‘Put that on.’ He started to yank on his clothing. ‘I think that was seven.’

 

‘Oh god,’ Sirius moaned. ‘Graham is going to kill me!’

 

‘There’re trains to London every half hour,’ Remus said, doing up the buttons of his shirt.

 

Sirius stopped in his headlong rush out the door and looked Remus up and down. ‘Why are you dressed?’

 

‘I was planning on walking you to the train,’ Remus explained, struggling with the sleeves on his coat, ‘though now “walk” doesn’t seem like the best word. And I was planning on making you breakfast, too, though that’s gone right out the window.’

 

Sirius couldn’t help himself from beaming. ‘That’s really sweet of you, Moony.’

 

Remus got his arms into the sleeves, finally, and said briskly, ‘Pull it together, Black. You have two hours to get from right here to the British Museum _and_ have learned about bog bodies. This is no time to get romantic.’ And then he stepped forward and kissed Sirius so hard that they staggered back into the door and Sirius almost impaled himself on the coat hooks. ‘Now, let’s go,’ Remus said.

 

‘It’s Remus Lupin’s world,’ Sirius murmured, holding Remus for just one more second, ‘I’m clearly just living in it.’ And Remus blushed and ducked his head and grinned.

 

They ran to the station, where Sirius checked train times while Remus bought him a ticket and then hustled him onto the platform. The train was a few minutes late so they stood, catching their breath while Remus talked Sirius through his lecture for the day.

 

‘They’re bodies. They fell into bogs. The anaerobic environment in the bogs-‘

 

‘The what environment?’

 

‘There’s no oxygen. So they can’t decay.’

 

‘But they get all brown and disgusting looking.’

 

‘Well, it’s more like they get tanned. You know, turned into leather.’

 

‘So they’re like big leather coats made of people? That’s really disgusting.’

 

‘Convey that level of disgust and fascination to the kids and I’m sure you’ll do just fine.’

 

The train pulled up then and as the doors opened and commuters poured out Sirius and Remus stood in the rush of traffic and looked dumbly at each other.

 

‘Are you coming back tomorrow night?’ Sirius asked finally.

 

‘Yes,’ Remus said. He hesitated, and then added, ‘I’ll try to come back as soon as possible, ok?’

 

Sirius took a deep breath and nodded. ‘I’ll clean the flat. And cook something nice.’

 

‘Oh,’ Remus said, also taking a deep breath, ‘don’t, you know, worry about it. Wait for me. I’ll help.’ They looked at each other more, still helpless, still in a steady stream of people rushing around them onto and off of the train. Then Remus laughed and said, a little wildly, ‘Oh, Padfoot, I’m such a domestic creature. All I want is to be home with you.’

 

‘Yes,’ Sirius said, aching to hold him. ‘Yes, me too.’

 

‘Get on the train,’ Remus said, and he gave him a little shove on the arm towards the carriage. Sirius stepped on just before the doors snapped shut and turned to look out the window at Remus, now standing on the platform, his shirt not buttoned correctly, his coat flapping open in the breeze, looking forlornly at the train. Sirius missed him so much already that he felt nauseous. He put a hand to the glass and then the train jerked to a start and pulled out of Oxford station.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's more fairly explicit sex in this one. You've been warned!
> 
> Also this chapter took me longer to write than any other one, based on trying to edit the conversation to make it as believable as possible. Just thought you should know! This thing is now officially well over Nanowrimo length, making it the longest thing I've written since 2004. Two more chapters remain.

Sirius barely remembered Monday while it was happening. The combination of exhaustion – he had gotten a combined eight hours of sleep over the weekend, if that – not to mention disorientation – the world, well, at least _his world_ , seemed to have fallen over on its axis at some point and now he was swimming upwards against gravity ( _but that didn’t make any sense, wasn’t he always? But was it normally this hard to do?_ ) – had put him into a kind of vague, dreamlike state.

 

Those two feelings, of course, were somewhere below the almost-vertigo-inducing euphoria caused by the triple-threat of a. he was in love with Remus Lupin, a.k.a. Moony; b. Remus seemed amenable to exploring that fact; and c. there had already been and seemed likely to be more mind-blowing sex involved in that exploration.

 

On the train, Sirius had sat staring out the window at mist rising off of fields, following the narrow curves of the Thames through the beauty of the Goring Gap and the more industrial sights of Reading, trying to make sense of the events of the past week. Unfortunately, he’d mostly come up with exhausted, disorientated, euphoric nonsense, informed by some half-forgotten astronomy lectures. He and Remus were like twin suns caught in an increasingly erratic orbit; they’d been circling around each other for years, but suddenly conditions had become right for the structure of the gas cloud of his soul to begin fluctuating wildly and he was going to go supernova and suck the other sun in (Remus, as shown in diagram 7b, caption: These two circles represent people as stars, honest, and no it’s not calling you fat, Sirius Black is just crap at drawing) and then they would collide and things would explode and get covered in stardust. Sexy, sexy stardust. Sirius had examined the metaphor ( _or was it a simile?_ He could never remember) and decided that it had sounded a lot more elegant when it was just a half-formed thought in his mind: they’d been orbiting around each other for years in an unstable equilibrium, and suddenly a crash had become imminent, and now nothing was the same.

 

Then again, maybe it had been nothing more cosmic than the combination of change for both of them: if you thought that your habits were strong enough, you’d stick with them. They were habits, after all. It was when you changed those habits – lost your job, moved to a new city, took up a new sport, started looking at your friend of many years differently – that all things became possible.

 

So once in London, he muddled through talking about bog bodies, muddled through attempting to work the Muggle electric kettle in the Museum tearoom, muddled through ignoring the flirtatious advances of the young head teacher whose class he had just taught and who for some reason had found it adorable that he couldn’t work the electric kettle, muddled through walking across London traffic, and muddled through making himself some dinner. Thinking he would be asleep in an instant, he went to bed when the sun was still shining through the curtains, but then tossed and turned for an hour before taking his pillow and walking across the hall to Remus’s room. He hesitated at the threshold, but then exhaustion overtook him again and he almost fell into the bed, already asleep as his head hit the sheets.  

 

In the middle of that night, he was awoken from a deep sleep by the familiar tapping of owl talons at the window.  He sat up and blinked around in the unfamiliar space before finding and opening the window. The owl that flew in looked distinctly harassed and flew off as soon as he took the scroll from around its leg. He opened it and recognised the distinctive cypher of the Order. Sighing, he swung his legs out of the bed, lit a candle, and set about deciphering it. Twenty minutes later, he was on his way to the warehouse in the East End that he had spent so much time patrolling the past winter.

 

When he arrived, he met two other members of the Order; there had been reported Dark activity there and they were the people who could be summoned fastest. They had a quick conversation about the best way to approach the situation and then went in, wands out.

 

It turned out to be a much more serious situation than any of them had suspected. Sirius, staring around the warehouse that he had thought he knew inside out, was shocked to discover that it had become a veritable factory for Inferi. And Sirius, like every member of the Order, not to mention right-thinking person in the wizarding world, was fucking terrified of Inferi. He’d come into contact with a captive one used for training Aurors back during his days at the Ministry, and the experience had scarred him; now, confronted with an entire warehouse full of them, he looked at his fellow Order members and saw that this was their first time seeing them and that they were paralysed with terror. He took a deep breath and took charge.

 

‘Fire is our best bet to destroy them,’ he whispered.

 

‘We’ll burn down the East End,’ Gideon Prewett whispered back, eyes enormous as he looked down on the warehouse floor. The smell was overwhelming.

 

‘No, it’s a good idea,’ said Marlene McKinnon, clearly struggling to get herself under control. ‘We’re right by the river.’

 

They split up and spread out, moving as quietly as they could. The trick would be to start a fire large enough and fast enough that none of the Inferi could escape – but that they themselves could. They did manage to pull that off, but Sirius found himself trapped on a set of stairs down to the river, suddenly below the tideline as it rose by his own spell to engulf the flames, hemmed in by Death Eaters. The other two Order members had already escaped and had thought that he had as well, but the Death Eaters had caught him in an anti-Apparition hex.

 

Being drowned by the Thames – the same gentle river on whose banks he’d lain with Remus just yesterday, whose course he had followed that morning ( _could it really have been that morning? It seemed so long ago_ ) on the train, the river of the city of his birth, the city he called home, the grey, dirty old river – seemed like the final insult. In desperation, he performed his spell of last resort: sending out his Patronus, which could travel to one person exactly – James, by longstanding agreement.

 

Instead, it was Remus who Apparated into the midst of the three remaining Death Eaters who had been keeping guard over him – all three relatives of his, to varying degrees, and Sirius had sensed with a shudder that they were waiting for an even closer relative, probably his cousin Bellatrix, to arrive – and had them hexed so quickly that they were hit almost before they’d registered his arrival. From the river, where he was struggling to stay above the surface of the oily water, Sirius had to marvel at Remus’s abilities in a fight; he was a swirling, twisting shape, firing off hexes too fast to be caught. He had a kind of terrible beauty, especially since he represented Sirius’s rescue party.

 

One of the Death Eaters cast off a Dark Mark to call attention to their position just before Remus’s hex lifted him bodily and flung him into the river; the Death Eater managed to right himself and Apparate just as he hit the surface, spraying the area with water. His Apparition lifted the spells that had been dragging Sirius down into the water, but he knew from long experience that the anti-Apparition hex they’d hit him with was time sensitive and would linger all day. Gasping, he struggled to the stone-walled side of the river. Remus had got down on the ground and was holding out his hand, but the look on his face, of wide-eyed, wild panic, stopped Sirius’s headlong rush out of the river. He had a second to realise that Remus was not just worried about him, not just trying to save a fellow Order member and friend, but was genuinely terrified. He had never, ever seen Remus lose his composure like this. Then Remus grabbed his robe at the scruff of his neck and started to yank him physically up and out of the water. Flailing, Sirius grabbed his hand and with Remus’s help struggled up the slippery staircase. Remus helped him up and over the chain suspended across the top of the stairs – his drenched and heavy robe tangled itself around and Remus lunged forward and cut it off with a slash of his wand, the two of them working to shove the material off; it fell and slithered down into the water, sinking amidst a burst of bubbles, still heavy from the spell that had been trying to drown him. Sirius stopped, shivering, now wearing just a soaked t-shirt and jeans, trying to catch his breath, but Remus said, ‘Let’s go, now,’ in a terse voice and pointed at the Dark Mark that was casting a sickly green light from the sky like a second malevolent moon. Sirius nodded, unable to get out words, lungs burning, and followed Remus at a run down the Thames Path.

 

They ran so far that they came to the under-construction Thames Barrier, in this light just ghostly shapes rising in the mist. Greater London glowed behind them; the Dark Mark now mostly faded as the wind tore at its ghoulish tendrils. Remus stopped running first and looked behind them, gasping for breath. Sirius almost crashed into him, then doubled over beside him, a hand on Remus’s arm for support, coughing up river water and trying to breathe after running full tilt for nearly a mile.

 

‘I think we’re safe,’ Remus said. ‘Are you hurt?’

 

Sirius shook his head. Remus helped him down to the ground and stood over him, stalking back and forth along the path.

 

‘You,’ Sirius finally gasped, still lying prone with his arms and legs splayed. ‘I thought James…’

 

A jogger passed around them, glaring.

 

‘Your Patronus came to me this time,’ Remus said, obviously trying to catch his breath despite his pacing. Sirius’s Patronus was a great shaggy canine. ‘It came to me and woke me up.’

 

Sirius sat up and shrugged helplessly. ‘Well, I’m glad it went to someone who could help,’ he said. ‘And someone who could Apparate without getting caught. You’re bloody impressive in a fight, you know. Thank you.’

 

Remus stopped pacing abruptly and gave him an intense look that Sirius couldn’t read. ‘What the hell happened?’ he demanded, still out of breath. ‘I thought you – god, Sirius, I saw you in the water, and I thought you were –‘ He stopped talking, swallowed with a visible effort, restarted in a calmer voice. ‘What happened?’

 

‘That warehouse,’ Sirius said. ‘Remember, at East India Quay? That we were all getting such terrible feelings from but couldn’t figure it out, it just seemed like it was abandoned? Well, I think that was some premonition. We walked in and found that they had been bringing in bodies from somewhere and turning them into Inferi in there. I know it’s kind of an involved series of spells to reanimate them so, I guess they needed a secure place to do it.’

 

Remus hissed between his teeth. ‘I hate to think where those bodies were coming from.’

 

‘They were, uhm,’ Sirius said, ‘actually, I try my best not to look directly at Inferi. Just in case, you know.’ He didn’t add the silent, _just in case it’s someone I know_.

 

Remus nodded, jaw tight, looking out over the water. Dawn light had started to hit the cranes above the Barrier, reflecting back white light onto his face. He looked set in stone, a sternly beautiful marble sculpture. Sirius longed to touch him.

 

‘Anyway, we thought it would be best to just burn the place down. Everyone else escaped but I got pinned down.’ Sirius looked to Remus for some acknowledgement, but the other man seemed to be completely lost in thought. I’m sorry,’ Sirius added, suddenly remembering the look of panic on Remus’s face as he’d reached towards him in the water. ‘I really thought my patronus would go to James.’

 

‘It’s fine,’ Remus said. He continued to stare out over the water and Sirius continued to stare at him, unable to move. Finally Remus said, ‘We should go home. I left my things in Oxford. I’ll have to go get them later.’

 

‘Sorry about your research,’ Sirius said. ‘I’m really buggering it up, huh?’

 

Remus looked at him then, that same intense look. ‘Don’t apologise. Really. Let’s just go home.’

 

‘I can’t Apparate,’ Sirius said. ‘Hex.’

 

‘It’s not going to be safe to do so anyway, with Death Eater activity having just occurred not far from here.’ Remus turned and looked to the north. ‘Where are we? Newham? Beckton? There must be a bus.’

 

There was a bus, and it even went vaguely near where they wanted to go. Their journey home was silent. Sirius leaned against Remus once they had taken their seats and after a minute, Remus took his hand and held it very tightly, their togetherness discreet in the pocket of his coat, folded away and hidden. Early morning commuters ignored them anyway, even though Sirius was soaking wet and Remus was wearing a coat over his pyjamas. Presumably they were used to seeing stranger that two bedraggled young men sitting just a smidge too close. Sirius, for his part, took comfort not only in Remus’s hand but also in the fact that the two of them were together, close enough to protect each other, surrounded by such quotidian Muggle things as the man in a three-piece suit puffing on a cigar while reading the Telegraph and adverts for biscuits. Sometimes he wanted to forget that there was such a thing as the magic to turn decaying bodies into Death Eaters’ slaves and just enjoy the simple pleasures of breathing in petrol fumes and cigarette smoke.

 

They arrived at their flat quite early in the morning and Remus opened the door and, ignoring Sirius’s suggestion of tea, walked straight to his bedroom. Sirius hesitated, still not sure what was wrong, then followed him. He walked in on Remus standing in the centre of the room, staring in a very focused way at his unmade bed, hands clenched into fists at his sides.

 

Sirius suddenly realised that Remus looked on the verge of tears, which was so unlike him that he had no idea what to do. ‘I slept here last night,’ he babbled helplessly. ‘It smelled like you. I missed you. I’m sorry.’

 

‘I can’t do this, Sirius,’ Remus said flatly. He took a step forward, away from him. ‘And it’s not your fault. I can’t… when I saw you in the water, and I thought you were dead, I…’ He took a shaky breath. Sirius reached for him and Remus shook his head. ‘I can’t,’ he repeated. ‘Yesterday was perfect, but today is real. I can’t do this. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened, and we were…’ He stopped again, then said, ‘Please, just let it go.’

 

Sirius felt like suddenly the world had begun to collapse, like he’d stepped outside and had found London subsiding into a great chasm opened up under the Thames. Feeling helpless and a little angry, he asked ‘Am I supposed to just put these feelings back inside? Just ignore them?’

 

Remus looked up at him, terrible pain written all over his face. ‘That’s what I’m trying to do.’

 

‘And is it working for you?’ Sirius demanded, much more belligerently than he’d intended.

 

‘Not particularly, no,’ Remus whispered. He put his head into his hands and Sirius felt terrible.

 

‘Remus, I’m…’

 

‘I’m so scared, Sirius,’ Remus whispered from between his fingers. ‘I’m so scared.’ Sirius saw that he was shaking and this time when he reached out Remus relented and collapsed against him, his face still hidden behind his hands. They sank to the floor and Sirius leaned back against the bed with Remus leaning against him. Sirius stroked his hair and Remus took several deep breaths.

 

‘I’m scared too,’ Sirius said quietly. ‘I’ve been scared for ages, Remus. Scared of everything. Growing up. The people I love moving on, away from me. Being alone. The war. The violence that people have been inflicting on each other, on other people who don’t deserve it and even people who maybe do deserve it, if you can say that anyone does…’ He pulled Remus a little closer and said, ‘I’m scared for you. That’s what started all this, I think. I had an, well, an encounter with some werewolves. They were in a bad way, and they were scared of what the Ministry might do to them.’ Remus looked up at him, frowning now. Sirius met his eyes and said, ‘I helped them escape. That’s why I got fired from Auror training. Not what I told you.’

 

‘Sirius,’ Remus started, but Sirius shook his head.

 

‘Remus. It was my decision. I don’t regret it for a second. That’s one thing I don’t have to be scared about: someone forcing me to make a choice that could hurt you.’

 

Remus looked so impossibly sad that it was breaking Sirius’s heart. ‘Oh Sirius,’ he breathed, but then he stopped, seemingly at a loss for words. Sirius took his hands and pulled him close again and then they were kissing, desperately, and Sirius wasn’t sure but it felt like Remus’s hands on his body were trying to verify that he was alive. Then Remus pulled him to his feet and stripped off his wet clothes before pushing him onto the bed, completely naked; Sirius collapsed backwards, startled, but Remus did not pause before climbing atop him, which had to be the sexiest thing Remus had done yet. As his weight pressed Sirius down into the mattress, Sirius felt certain that Remus was trying to verify that Sirius was still alive, and he thought, _I should give the man what he wants,_ so he responded, losing himself completely to sensation, thrusting upwards. He became aware of Remus’s erection, hot against his leg through the fabric of the pyjamas, the same fabric that was suddenly tightly stretched underneath Sirius’s hand, where he was rubbing it over and over, frantic to memorise the heavy shape of Remus’s arousal. Remus moaned and ground down into Sirius’s hand. Together they pulled his clothing off until Remus was kicking his trousers away down the end of the bed and they were pressed skin to skin. Remus pulled the comforter over them so that they were in a cocoon of warmth – Sirius realised that he was shivering and had been for some time, and that Remus’s body was burning hot where it touched him.

 

‘You’re clammy and you smell like river,’ Remus breathed into his ear and Sirius laughed and gasped back, ‘Regretting rescuing me?’

 

‘Regretting that we’re in my bed instead of yours, maybe,’ he replied, but the words were lost when he kissed him so hard that their teeth clashed.

 

By now they were thrusting rhythmically, Sirius moaning into Remus’s mouth, who was panting, pausing between kisses to bury his head in Sirius’s neck, his breath hot and his mouth hot and Sirius thought that this might be a terrible idea but he wanted Remus to be inside of him, wanted it _right now_ , wanted them to be joined as one so that they could exist together for as long as possible. Sirius wrapped his legs around Remus’s and Remus moaned, ran a hand down one of Sirius’s thighs and then gripped it, tightly, and pulled it up along his body to use as further leverage to thrust against him, their cocks now rubbing hard and sticky between their stomachs. Remus’s hold on Sirius’s thigh was so hard as to be painful but something about it – the desire, but also the implied possessiveness, that this leg belonged to Remus and he would do with it as he saw fit, manoeuver it into the best position to best pleasure them, stroke it to make Sirius cry out, hold it tightly again to pull them close and create friction – ok, several somethings about it, which Sirius would have to categorise later, had become the most wonderful experience of his life. Remus stroked and kissed him, hands and mouth seemingly everywhere, and in the dark warmth of the bed, illuminated by the soft light of dawn filtered through white cotton, Sirius looked at Remus above him and couldn’t stop himself, he couldn’t seem to stop saying, ‘You’re so gorgeous, oh Remus, please, oh, I need you,’ and Remus ducked down and kissed him on the mouth, hard enough to take his breath away, and said, ‘Don’t say that, please don’t say that.’

 

Sirius had his hands on Remus’s cock, it was so hard and thick and huge and he didn’t know what to do, but he was pressing it down between his legs, feeling filthy and crazy and terrified and above all achingly aroused, but he wanted to make himself clear. ‘Remus, I do need you, I promise you…’

 

Remus sat up, the comforter sliding down around his shoulders and exposing them to the cool light of the bedroom. ‘Sirius…’

 

‘What?’ Sirius asked, reaching; that impossibly sad look was back on Remus’s face.

 

‘I can’t do this,’ Remus said, and then he was out of the bed and grabbing at the clothing on the floor. ‘I’m sorry,’ he added, ‘I’m really, really sorry.’

 

‘Wait, Remus,’ Sirius said, but Remus was too fast for him, having in fact stolen Sirius’s own wet trousers, and by the time he’d realised that and had located Remus’s pyjama bottoms at the foot of the bed and tugged them on, Remus had gone. Sirius stood in the doorway of the flat, breathing hard, and then slammed the door shut as hard as he could. It didn’t resonate quite the way he had wanted it to, so he opened it again and slammed it even harder. Somewhere in the kitchen, he heard something fall off a shelf and break and he thought, savagely, _well that’s just fucking perfect_ and _back to square one_.  


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A fairly short penultimate chapter setting up the final scene. The last one might take me a few days to post, as I'm still fiddling with some of the dialogue.

After the most miserable day Sirius could ever recall having – he was utterly exhausted and not in any pleasant way; meanwhile, Graham had walked around him all day on eggshells, making him tea and asking him repeatedly if everything with Remus was ok, to which he had weakly lied before finally breaking down after the kids had left for the day and admitting that they’d had a fight – he had gone back to the flat, hoping to find Remus, but instead had found nothing but empty, accusatory rooms. After that, his feet sympathetically led him to James and Lily’s doorstep, where Lily, somehow even more pregnant than just a few days ago, opened the door, took one look at him, and wrapped him in a hug.

 

‘What happened?’ she asked, leading him into their sitting room.

 

James emerged from the kitchen, wearing an apron and holding a knife; it also took him only a single look at Sirius to say, ‘Come sit in the kitchen, let me get you some tea.’

 

‘I’m pretty sick of tea, honestly,’ Sirius said, having been mainlining it all day in an attempt to keep awake, not to mention the three cups just an hour ago that Graham had pressed upon him sympathetically, but he followed Lily into the kitchen. James handed him a tumbler of whisky and he drank it in one. James and Lily gave each other a look that made Sirius simultaneously want to claw his own eyes out and to have Remus there beside him. Then James refilled his glass.

 

Three whiskies later, he slowed down and stared at the table until James sat down opposite him and said, ‘All right, out with it.’

 

Sirius shot a look at Lily and said, ‘Does Yoko have to listen?’

 

‘What did you just call me?’ Lily demanded and James rolled his eyes.

 

‘It’s her kitchen too, you know.’

 

‘Remus and I also share a kitchen,’ Sirius blurted, which in retrospect was a pretty incomprehensible statement, and also made him want to cry, which would have been unspeakably awful. James cocked his head and Lily pursed her lips.

 

‘So I guess that going out to Oxford didn’t go so well?’ she asked.

 

‘Actually, it went perfectly,’ Sirius said, miserable. ‘Better than I could ever have imagined. Moony said that if I could become an Animagus for him then the least he could do was devote a night to figuring out if he could fancy me.’

 

James blinked. ‘He _said that_?’

 

‘Told you he’d be nice,’ Lily said.

 

‘That’s… kind of beyond _being nice_ , don’t you think?’ James asked.

 

‘But he is nice,’ Sirius said, and nearly started crying again, because yes, Remus was very nice, and now Remus was gone, and their flat was empty, and...

 

‘Wait,’ James said, urgently, ‘how exactly did he propose to figure that out?’

 

Sirius paused and took another gulp of whisky. Lily’s mouth took on a decidedly amused set and James’s eyes got wide as Sirius said. ‘Oh, well, you know, we kissed…’

 

‘Oh,’ James breathed, ‘ok, well, I guess that’d do it.’

 

‘And then we took off our clothes – well, sort of, some of our clothes –‘

 

‘Stop right there,’ James snapped, hands flying to his ears. ‘You and Moony? Got naked together?’

 

‘Why should I stop?’ Sirius demanded belligerently.

 

‘Yeah,’ Lily said, ‘it’s not any different from any girl…’

 

‘And I had to hear _so many_ disgusting details about you and Lily…’

 

‘Oh my god,’ Lily said, putting her head in her hands.

 

‘Completely different,’ James snarled, ‘because Lily is not Moony, who is one of my best friends...’

 

‘So what?’ Sirius demanded. ‘I… like… Lily!’

 

Lily glared at him. ‘I’m on your side here, Black,’ she snapped. ‘So try not to insult me?’

 

Sirius breathed hard through his nose. ‘Sorry.’

 

‘Ok,’ James said, hands up, ‘ok, you’re both right, it’s not different, I guess. But moving on, quickly, so, uh, Remus turned out to fancy you?’

 

‘It seemed like it,’ Sirius said, instantly miserable again. ‘He… it was perfect. We had a perfect day on Sunday.’

 

‘More sex?’ Lily asked, one eyebrow raised, and Sirius blushed.

 

‘Oh my god, you had sex?’ James said. He poured himself some whisky, drained the glass, and then said, ‘Remus is apparently the easiest man on the planet.’

 

‘Oh go to hell,’ Sirius snapped.

 

‘After you, of course,’ James added. ‘First date? Whatever happened to romance?’

 

‘As if you wouldn’t have-‘

 

Lily quelled this argument with a glare. ‘James, let’s not rehash the events of our first date, shall we?’

 

James sighed and said, ‘Sorry Lily, just trying to, you know, inject some levity into the situation…’

 

‘It’s ok,’ Sirius said glumly. ‘It could use it.’

 

‘So you guys had, uh, a time, that was, uhm, good, on Sunday…’ James prompted. ‘But it is now Tuesday. What happened on Monday?’

 

Sirius took a deep breath. He was starting to feel very drunk and the story was swimming in front of his eyes. ‘So then I got this message on Monday night – to go to that East End warehouse where we were all doing patrols back in the winter –‘

 

‘I always got a bad vibe from there,’ James said. He took another drink of whisky and said, ‘So I’m guessing it was trouble?’

 

‘It was,’ Sirius confirmed. ‘Big trouble. I sort of panicked. I sent out my patronus. And apparently the person who my patronus goes to in case of emergency is no longer you.’

 

‘Hm,’ James said, frowning. ‘Dumbledore said I could be on a kind of paternity leave from Order duties. But I would think it would still go to me…’

 

‘Yes, but an unfocused patronus could just as easily have gone to the person to whom you feel most…’ Lily stopped talking and her hand flew to her mouth.

 

James’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, no, it must have gone to Remus.’

 

Sirius nodded his head and Lily said, ‘Oh dear, that must have panicked him.’

 

Sirius nodded again. ‘In retrospect, yes, that must be what happened. And so once the trouble was over, well, he, well,’ Sirius took a deep breath, ‘he said we couldn’t be together. And I kind of inferred from, uh, contextual evidence, that it was because he can’t deal with the thought of losing me.’ He paused, mulled the glass, and added, ‘Also, he stole my trousers.’

 

Lily and James exchanged another look, one that Sirius was too drunk to interpret but assumed was sympathy or pity or some other shared emotion between them because they were the most perfectly in love couple in the entire world and god he hated them but he also loved them, and there seemed to be a lot of that in his life right now. Then Lily said, ‘Give Remus some time, maybe. This is all happening pretty fast.’

 

‘I just,’ Sirius said, rolling the tumbler nervously between his hands, ‘worry that we’ll run out of time. That something will happen to one or both us.’ He raised his eyes to look at Lily. ‘Like you two deciding to have a baby now. The future is too uncertain. I feel like time is hanging over me.’ He paused and took a deep breath. ‘I’m so scared that I could lose him.’

 

Lily took his hand, tears suddenly in her eyes, and James said, his voice very quiet, ‘Yes, we know that feeling.’ 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter of this monstrosity. If you enjoyed it (or didn't but for some reason hate-read through it?), I would love it if you left me some feedback. Like all fanfic, it's been a labour of love!

Sirius bedded down on the Potters’ couch that night, expecting to sleep the heavy sleep of the dead drunk, since he and James had managed to put away most of a bottle of firewhisky between them. Instead, almost as soon as he’d closed his eyes – or so it felt – James was shaking him awake in a complete panic.

 

‘Sirius,’ he said. ‘Sirius, wake the fuck up. Padfoot. Right fucking now!’

 

Sirius dizzy and trying to shake the fog out of his head, squinted at James, who was holding a candle much too close to his face and breathing alcoholic fumes on him. ‘What?’ he hissed.

 

‘I am the worst father in the entire world,’ James moaned, ‘because I got drunk, and then my wife went into _labour_ twenty minutes after we went to bed, and now I can’t get her to St Mungo’s!’

 

Sirius’s heart stuttered. He sat up unsteadily. ‘Lily?’ he clarified. ‘Is having the baby?’

 

‘That’s the one!’ James snapped. ‘And we can’t use magic to get there – too risky, Death Eaters, anything, anything could happen, and Sirius, I was supposed to drive her but oh my god I can’t possibly drive and…’

 

Sirius took a deep breath. He was good in a crisis. He was calm. He was thorough and attentive to detail. Usually. And when he wasn’t, there was one man upon whom he could rely to be even more so. ‘We’ll send a message.’

 

‘Owls are too slow!’ James moaned. ‘They can be intercepted! Death Eaters can kill them! They can get distracted and want to eat mice!’

 

‘No need for an owl,’ Sirius said, and for the second time in twenty-four hours, he took out his wand and invoked his Patronus, praying that Remus would understand.

 

 

Remus arrived almost immediately, Peter in tow, both white in the face and with wands drawn.

 

‘What is going on?’ Peter demanded. Remus, lips pressed tightly together, seemed unable to say anything. He was looking anywhere but at Sirius, who, conversely, couldn’t seem to look at anything but him. ‘Who should I be hexing?’

 

‘Don’t hex anyone!’ Sirius said, waving his arms around his head in what he hoped would be interpreted as a calming gesture. ‘Everything’s fine.’

 

‘Everything’s not fine!’ James yelled at him. ‘What are you talking about? Why are you waving your arms?’

 

‘If everything’s fine, then why did Sirius’s patronus show up in my kitchen?’ Peter demanded. ‘That’s supposed to be a last resort kind of signal, remember? And yeah, why are you waving your arms?’

 

‘I’m waving my arms because-‘

 

‘Shut _up_ , Sirius,’ James interrupted, his voice breaking. ‘We’re having a crisis. Oh my god, we’re having a crisis.’

 

Remus found his voice. ‘And you needed to call the cavalry in the most stressful manner possible?’ he asked, incredulous. ‘Have you ever heard of using a goddamned owl?’

 

‘This is important!’ James snapped at him. ‘Yes, I needed to call the cavalry, and an owl would not have gotten there fast enough!’

 

‘I don’t know if you know this,’ Remus snarled, and everyone in the room took an involuntary step back, because a furious Remus was both a rarity and a terror, ‘but people have crises every single day and almost never is anyone as panicked and, and, just as fucking absurd as you are acting right now!’

 

‘He’s drunk,’ Sirius said timidly, feeling the need to stick up for James, given that the reason why James was drunk had a lot to do with, well, Sirius.

 

‘What a shock,’ Remus snapped, turning on Sirius. Sirius had a fleeting moment to think, _Damn, he is stunning_ , before Remus continued, ‘You and James? Drinking irresponsibly? What an absolute bloody shock. And if this crisis has anything to do with you and you thought it was a good idea to call me over here using your patronus, then…’ At this point, words seemed to fail him again and Peter put a hand on his arm and said, ‘Jesus, Sirius, what a terrible idea. You scared Remus half to death. You should have seen him. Not to mention me.’

 

Sirius opened his mouth to retort, or bare his teeth, or in some other way make it clear that he did not like Peter or anyone else for that matter who was not him putting his hand on Remus, but the scene was cut short by the entrance of Lily. She came out of their bedroom, fully dressed and looking very pale but very composed. Her eyes flicked between the four of them, and then she sighed deeply, and said to Remus and Peter, ‘I suppose that neither of them has managed to explain what’s going on yet?’

 

James burst out, ‘Lily is having the baby and I’m too drunk to drive her there and Sirius can’t drive her there anyway even though he’s also very drunk because he has no idea how to drive a Muggle car and I had to take lessons but I’m still not very good so it would be great if you could do this for us, Remus.’

 

‘Why on earth did neither of you just _say that when we arrived_?’ Remus demanded of Sirius and James.

 

Lily made an apologetic face at Remus. ‘The men we love, huh?’ she said to him with a shrug. Remus opened and shut his mouth once, during which time Peter coughed, James goggled, and Sirius held out hope that Remus would utter a resigned, ‘Yeah,’ or in some other way acknowledge that there was truth to her statement, but he didn’t.

 

Instead, he took charge. He knew how to drive a Muggle car because his mother was a Muggle and he’d grown up with some of their technology; he was apparently dead sober; and moreover, just the sight of him seemed to calm Lily somewhat.

 

‘It’s nothing to do with you two,’ she explained to Sirius as he and James helped her into the car while Peter frantically cranked open the garage door and Remus familiarised himself with the clutch. ‘It’s just that he was a fellow prefect. I know I can trust him in a crisis.’ Sirius glanced at James, who was about two seconds away from needing a paper bag to breathe into, and then at Remus, who was calmly waiting for them to get into the car, and had to agree with her assessment.

 

They made it to the entrance of St Mungo’s without incident. Emmeline – having received a message from Peter – met them outside with a bag of things for Lily and a huge smile.

 

‘Best news someone’s woken me up with in ages!’ she beamed, taking one of Lily’s hands from Sirius; James had her other one. Peter got out of the car to follow, holding another bag for Lily, and Sirius glanced back at Remus.

 

‘I’ve got to park the car,’ Remus said. He hesitated, as did Sirius; the others disappeared into the wall behind him.

 

‘I’m coming with you,’ Sirius decided, climbing into the passenger seat.

 

They didn’t say anything as Remus circled around the narrow streets, looking for somewhere to leave the car – Sirius wasn’t even sure where the car had come from, though he suspected that it had been borrowed from some member of Lily’s family – until Remus found somewhere for it to go, slotting it expertly into a narrow space. Sirius marvelled at Remus’s ability to do seemingly anything and everything except, maybe, have a serious emotional conversation without running out the door. Then they got out of the car and started the walk back to the hidden entrance to the hospital.

 

After the silence had gotten to excruciating levels, Sirius said conversationally, ‘So, how are you?’

 

Remus actually winced. He looked sideways at Sirius and then said, ‘Fine.’

 

‘Great,’ Sirius muttered. ‘Just great. Well, I’m not. I’m bloody miserable.’

 

Remus sighed. ‘You never do anything by half measures, do you?’

 

‘What do you mean?’ Sirius demanded.

 

Remus threw up his hands, clearly exasperated. ‘What, a week ago? You had no idea you even had feelings for me. And now all of a sudden it’s the end of the world if I think it’s a terrible idea for us to get together.’ Sirius stopped walking in the middle of the pavement, and Remus stopped too. ‘Come on,’ he said, sounding even more exasperated. ‘This is neither the time nor the place.’

 

‘Why is it a terrible idea?’ Sirius demanded.

 

‘Because we’ve known each other for about a thousand years and it makes no sense?’

 

‘No,’ Sirius said, angry now and pointing at Remus’s chest. ‘That’s a stupid excuse. You know there’s something there.’

 

Remus stepped back from Sirius’s pointing finger and Sirius could see him compose himself, tamp down his emotions as abruptly as if he’d snuffed out a candle with a heavy douter, and he had for the first time a glimpse of what that self-control felt like, what it did to Remus to have to do it and how desperately he was clinging onto it. Then Remus said, his voice full of forced insouciance, ‘Or maybe I was just trying to, I don’t know, get caught up in the moment. To make you feel better. And then I thought about it some more and saw how completely absurd an idea it was.’

 

If Sirius hadn’t seen that second of discomposure, that twitch in the steely curtain of stoicism in which Remus had always wrapped himself so tightly, he might have given up and let him break his heart. Instead, he stepped closer to the other man, who watched him through narrowed eyes, and said, ‘I saw you this morning. I saw your face when you thought I was dead.’

 

Remus continued to glare. ‘And what did that tell you?’ he demanded. ‘I was trying to rescue you and not be killed by some Death Eaters after having Apparated into a very dangerous situation, and that was after having been awoken from a dead sleep and having to cast a complicated spell to trace your patronus.’

 

‘That’s not the look I’m talking about,’ Sirius said.

 

‘Then what?’

 

‘You thought I was dead,’ Sirius said, gaining confidence in what he was saying as Remus’s face paled. ‘You were terrified.’

 

Remus’s mouth wavered for a second before he suddenly slumped and regained that old, tired look on his face that made Sirius’s heart ache so. He shut his eyes for a second and then said, ‘Sirius, can we not do this on the street? You’re drunk.’

 

Sirius wasn’t, anymore, the events of the night having sobered him up quite well. ‘I’m not,’ he said quietly, ‘though you can use that as an excuse for what I’m saying if it will make you feel better. But we both know that I’m right.’

 

Remus sighed. ‘Come here.’ He led Sirius into the alley behind the magical barrier into St Mungo’s. ‘I just don’t want to talk about this in the middle of the street.’

 

‘That’s fair,’ Sirius said quietly, looking at the rigid lines of Remus’s back as he followed him.

 

Once in the alley, Remus leaned back against the brick wall at one side, and Sirius took his cue and leaned back against the other. He felt emotionally wrung out, and a quiet kind of despair. Remus was stubborn, and cautious, and sensible, and nothing that they had been doing for the last few days had fit into any of those categories; it seemed unlikely that Remus would endorse anything long term that wasn’t. Then again, he’d also seen a heretofore-hidden part of Remus that had been impulsive and intensely passionate. _Maybe…_

 

‘I’ve thought of a hundred different ways to say that I’m not in love with you,’ Remus said, finally. ‘All day, I’ve just been coming up with reasons, with excuses.’ He smiled, so sadly that Sirius suspected that he was smiling to avoid crying. ‘The trouble is, they’re not true.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I think I’m in love with you.’ Sirius’s stomach lurched and Remus took another deep breath. ‘Oh, Sirius, I think I’m so in love with you. And I didn’t know it before and it’s been quite a revelation for me, because I thought I’d never fall in love with anyone and I didn’t mean to but I couldn’t stop myself.’

 

Sirius reached out for him just as Remus moved towards him. He clutched at Sirius’s shoulders, and Sirius wasn’t sure, but it sounded like he was crying, and Sirius clutched at him back and he really did start crying, because this was the beginning of something and also the end of something else, here in this dark alley underneath these dim streetlights, and then they kissed, damp mouths and noses rubbed together, more about being close than passion, though there was some of that too, underlying it, like the buttresses beneath a cathedral roof. Sirius wanted to be eloquent, but all he could say, breathing in sharply against Remus’s mouth, was, ‘Oh Remus,’ and, ‘I love you too, and,’ here he broke away and waited until Remus looked at him before asking him the thing that had been weighing on him all day: ‘You’ll stay in our flat, right? I can’t bear to be there without you.’

 

Remus smiled, a genuine, sweet smile. ‘Of course I’ll stay,’ he said, arms tight around Sirius’s back. ‘After all, I’ve got to keep you solvent.’ And then he smiled more widely and Sirius squeezed him until he squawked and said, ‘Oh, this is crazy, Sirius,’ and, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you,’ and then Sirius was holding him tightly not to tease him, but because he wanted them to be as close as they could be, and they were kissing again, until Sirius heard the back door of the hospital open.

 

‘Sirius? Remus?’ they heard Peter call.

 

Remus clung to him harder. Sirius wiped his nose on his sleeve and called back, ‘Is it time?’

 

‘Close, the healer said. What are you doing out here?’ He could hear Peter’s footsteps approaching. Still, Remus held onto him. A decision was being made here, and he saw Peter, and then saw Peter stop. His eyes went wide and met Sirius’s.

 

‘Hey Wormy,’ Remus said, and finally he let go of Sirius and turned to face Peter, wiping his eyes.

 

‘So I guess you changed your mind, then?’ Peter, still wide-eyed, asked Remus, who nodded.

 

‘Well,’ Peter said. He took a deep breath and so did Remus. ‘That’s good, I think,’ Peter said. ‘C’mon inside. James is about to have a stroke.’

 

They went inside together. Remus excused himself to blow his nose and Sirius said awkwardly to Peter, ‘Did you know about… us?’

 

‘Remus and I talked about it yesterday,’ Peter said. ‘He came over to mine after he left your place.’ He had his hands shoved into his pockets. ‘It seems like it’s a good thing. For both of you.’

 

‘Me too,’ Sirius said in a rush, so incredibly grateful for his friends, for the whole world.

 

They entered the waiting room. Emmy, sitting rigidly in a very institutional-looking chair, gave Peter a Look; James was pacing in front of her in ever-shrinking circles.

 

‘James, mate, you’re going to get dizzy,’ Sirius said, taking his shoulders and gently steering him to a chair. Remus arrived and headed straight for Sirius. He sat down beside him but kept his head down. James sat on his other side, bouncing his leg up and down and staring at the door. In the chairs across from them, Peter was holding Emmy’s hand and chewing his nails. Sirius kept one hand on James’s shoulder and with the other reached out for Remus’s. James glanced at him and raised an eyebrow as Remus took it. Then the healer came through the door and said, ‘Mr Potter?’

 

Everyone in the room froze in tableau. Sirius felt terror, for the future, and nostalgia, for the boys they’d been, and a little bit of sadness, for things that would inevitably end, but above all, he felt an all-consuming love, radiating out of him to everyone in this room, and beyond, into the room where Lily and the new Evans-Potter creation were, and most of all to the man at his left, the man who he was suddenly certain he would love until he died, and beyond, until there was nothing left of either of them and even then there might still be star matter somewhere that bore some other star matter a certain fondness in memory of this great love. Everything was about to change. He squeezed Remus’s hand and Remus squeezed back.

 

‘Mr Potter, you have a son.’


End file.
